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Biography Feature

British Prime Ministers

"Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen." Winston Churchill
Book jacket




Tony Blair's A Journey has just been published in Great Britain and this seems a good opportunity to get to know more about the men -and the one woman- who filled the office of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. To find out more about them consult our resources below.

Shelf help:

These are just some of the biographies and works about British Prime Ministers that can be found in the library collection

Books:

Churchill
By Paul Johnson
"In this enthusiastic yet first-rate biography, veteran British historian Johnson (Modern Times) asserts that Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was the 20th century's most valuable figure: No man did more to preserve freedom and democracy.... An ambitious, world-traveling soldier and bestselling author, Churchill was already famous on entering Parliament in 1899 and within a decade was working with Lloyd George to pass the great reforms of 1908-1911. As First Lord of the Admiralty, he performed brilliantly in preparing the navy for WWI, but blame - undeserved according to Johnson - or the catastrophic 1915 Dardanelles invasion drove him from office. Within two years, he was back at the top, where he remained until the Depression. Johnson delivers an adulatory account of Churchill's prescient denunciations of Hitler and heroics during the early days of WWII, and views later missteps less critically than other historians. He concludes that Churchill was a thoroughly likable great man with many irritating flaws but no nasty ones: he lacked malice, avoided grudges, vendettas and blame shifting, and quickly replaced enmity with friendship. Biographers in love with their subjects usually produce mediocre history, but Johnson, always self-assured as well as scholarly, has written another highly opinionated, entertaining work". Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (Amazon)
Neville Chamberlain : a biography
By Robert Self
"History has not looked kindly upon Neville Chamberlain. Despite a long and distinguished political career, his trip to Munich in 1938 and the 'appeasement' of Hitler have forever overshadowed his many other achievements and blighted his reputation, his name now synonymous with the futility of trying to reason with dictators and bullies. Yet, as this biography shows, there is much more to this complex and intriguing character than is generally supposed, and even the infamous events of 1938 are open to more charitable interpretations than is usually the case. Appeasement brought the British government crucial time in which to rearm, and in particular allowed the RAF to drastically increase the number of fighter aircraft it could muster for the Battle of Britain during the summer of 1940. Based on the study of over 150 collections of private papers on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as exhaustive exploration of British government records held in the National Archives, it is no exaggeration to say that the author has surveyed virtually all the existing archival material written by or to Chamberlain, as well as a high proportion of that referring to him. As such this volume will no doubt establish itself as the definitive account of Chamberlain's life and career, and provide a much fuller and fairer picture of his actions than has hitherto been the case." (Amazon)
The great man : scoundrel, genius and Britain's first Prime Minister
By Edward Pearce
"The year 1721 has many splendors, but there are also 13 public hanging days a year, drunkenness is endemic, and organized crime rampages through the streets. Only a generation earlier James II, suspected of conspiring to enforce Roman Catholicism and subordinate England to France, was driven out by the Whigs. In 1715 his son, the Pretender, failed to take the Crown by armed force. The new King, George I, an intelligent, moderate man, is cursed everywhere as a damned foreigner. James's followers, the Jacobites, conspire and are persecuted. In 1720, the South Sea Bubble, an attempt to finance state debt by runaway speculation, collapses. Ruined people mass in Westminster. The South Sea directors, says an MP, should be thrown into the sea. The Pretender could take over any day. Robert Walpole, once imprisoned for financial chicanery, assumes political control. When the rage subsides he becomes chief minister - or, a new title, "Prime Minister"." (Amazon)

You can find more items on British Prime Ministers in our catalogue here

From our databases:

David Lloyd George: article from Biography Resource Center

Margaret Thatcher: article from Discovering Collection

Previous Biography Features

Recent items

MyLibrary:

Have a look at the libraries' Biography recent picks for new biographies.

MyLibrary is a free service which allows you to set up your own portal page to collect lists of new books, CDs and DVDs in the library. Our librarians compile these lists on a monthly basis across the different subject areas in the library's collection, and for many subjects these monthly lists are available going back a number of years.

Librarian's Choice

Recommended by our librarians this month...

Image courtesy of Syndetics Just Kids, by Patti Smith (2009)
"...This beautifully crafted love letter to her friend (who died in 1989) functions as a memento mori of a relationship fueled by a passion for art and writing. Smith transports readers to what seemed like halcyon days for art and artists in New York as she shares tales of the denizens of Max's Kansas City, the Hotel Chelsea, Scribner's, Brentano's, and Strand bookstores. In the lobby of the Chelsea, where she and Mapplethorpe lived for many years, she got to know William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Johnny Winter. Most affecting in this tender and tough memoir, however, is her deep love for Mapplethorpe and her abiding belief in his genius. Smith's elegant eulogy helps to explain the chaos and the creativity so embedded in that earlier time and in Mapplethorpe's life and work. (Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information)"

Online databases

Online biography resources can be found at mygateway.info. Check out the Biography portal page for databases such as Biography Resource Center and the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, for example, contains over 3,000 biographies of famous New Zealanders (it does not, however, include people who are alive).

Biographies can also be found on many of our other databases for particular subject areas including arts, music, and business. Ask at any library enquiries desk if you need help with these resources:

Useful websites

Magazines

Check out reviews of newly released biographies in magazines held in the Arts, Music and Literature section at Central Library.


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