Word: beaverbrook
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...years. As the man who had led his nation to victory in World War 1 and founded the welfare state, he enjoyed greater popular support than any other British politician in more than a century. Politically, he seemed a titan, ruling over squabbling pygmies. Yet the fact was, as Beaverbrook tells the story. "Lloyd George was a Prime Minister without a party." His own Liberal Party was split into warring factions. Severe unemployment at home and violent disagreements over foreign policy had frayed the Liberals' uneasy coalition with the Conservatives. "The Big Beast of the Forest," as his ministers...
There are few historians who can say: "I was there." One who can-and frequently does-is Max Beaverbrook, the Canadian-born press lord and sometime Cabinet Minister who has been passionately involved in the "Great Game" of British politics for half a century. In the third of his authoritative, astringent histories of the World War 1 era and its aftermath (the others: Politicians and the War, Men and Power), Lord Beaverbrook is himself a central figure in the narrative. Beaverbrook was a member of Lloyd George's wartime cabinet (as minister of information) but it was largely through...
...Beaverbrook knew precisely what he wanted. Both as publisher and politician, his career has been devoted to a single, quixotic goal, the creation of an Empire-wide economic union; he admits cheerfully that he bought the then bankrupt Daily Express for this "sole and only purpose." He realized that he would never convert Lloyd George to the cause of Empire free trade. So, working behind the scenes like a Machiavellian elf, Beaverbrook applied his charm, wealth and printing presses to the destruction of his old colleague...
...Beaverbrook's chosen champion was melancholy Bonar Law, a fellow Canadian who as leader of the Tory Party in 1916 had helped bring Lloyd George to power, only to resign four years later. Ailing and self-effacing, Law was a reluctant matador. But by suasion and sly pressure, Beaverbrook finally maneuvered his hero into the famed Carlton Club meeting at which Law captained a revolt of Tory M.P.s that dissolved the coalition and toppled the Big Beast. Though Law won the election, he was Prime Minister for only seven months-and confounded his eminence grise by rejecting Beaverbrook...
...Damn the King!" Beaverbrook has acquired the private papers of several key figures in his drama, most notably the unpublished diaries of Frances Stevenson, who was Lloyd George's secretary, later his wife, and for many years his closest confidante. Though Beaverbrook describes Miss Stevenson's diaries as "a startling political document," his discreet excerpts give no hint of Lloyd George's notorious amatory adventures...