Each month No 10 invites a professional historian to contribute a short article to this series.
Clement Attlee bore little resemblance to the contemporary politician. He had no time for the things that are now the stock-in-trade of all serious aspirants for high office: image and public relations. Attlee was so apparently unconcerned with presentation that …
Ask anyone to name Winston Churchill’s best-known speech and nine times out of ten they will answer: ‘We shall fight them on the beaches’. It’s not an exact quotation – Churchill did not include the word ‘them’ – but the …
Behind every Prime Minister there are other people, ‘at Power’s Elbow’, never achieving the same acclaim or notoriety, yet indispensable to the very public figure they support. The British premiership has always been a group effort. This point can be …
Modern technology means that today’s politicians remain contactable, even when on holiday. Constant access to digital communications can be a mixed blessing but, in the event of a crisis, the public can rest assured that holidays can be interrupted and …
On 20 February 1913 The Times reported: ‘An attempt was made yesterday morning to blow up a house which is being built for Mr Lloyd George near Walton Heath Golf Links’. One device had exploded, causing about £500 worth of …
When Parliament met on 10 April to pay tribute to Baroness Thatcher, Prime Minster David Cameron observed that, ‘at a time when it was difficult for a woman to become a Member of Parliament, almost inconceivable that one could lead …
As Benjamin Disraeli’s coffin was lowered into the ground on 26 April, 1881, the attention of the crowded mourners and reporters fixed on a simple primrose wreath amidst the mass of floral tributes left in the churchyard at Hughenden, Buckinghamshire. …
The reign of George III, from 1760 to 1820, one of the longest in British history, proved very important to the development of the modern idea of the Prime Minister. There was a major contrast between the situation in the …
In Anthony Trollope’s 1876 novel The Prime Minister, the Prime Minister of the title is Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium. It may today appear very strange that a member of the House of Lords could head the British government. …
Seen at its inception in December 1852 as a distillation of political talent, the Aberdeen Coalition held office for just two years and one month. It was brought down in January 1855 by allegations of gross military mismanagement in the …
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