Excerpt from The Prime Minister, Vol. 2 of 3: An Historical Romance In England, a tailor is looked upon, not only as inferior to other men, but actually to be of no more consideration than the ninth part of a man now, in Portugal, the same unjust sort of prejudice exists against shoemakers; couse quently, cobblers are considered utterly below all notice. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Lord North was in many ways a most successful politician. Prime Minister for an unbroken twelve years, his management of both parliament and of the business of government was adept. He enjoyed the confidence of King George III, not always an easy political ally, avoided factional strife (having no political following of his own), was notably uncorrupt and made virtually no enemies. In many ways he epitomised the political outlook and aristocratic assumptions of the eighteenth century. He is, however, principally remembered for presiding over Britain's loss of her American colonies. Lord North: The Prime Minister Who Lost America is a scholarly but highly readable account of his life. It includes a full study of the American War of Independence, examining it from the perspective of the British government as well as from the colonial standpoint. No senior politician had visited America and few had a proper knowledge or understanding of Americans. Too often the colonists were regarded as unruly and ungrateful children, with whom compromise was either a sign of weakness or the betrayal of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. Highmindedness contributed to the final humiliation, as did ignorant overconfidence. Military defeat, to a country that had become preeminent in Europe by the end of the Seven Years War, was not entertained as a possibility.

Reproduction of the original: The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (Vol 2 of 3) by John Morley

Dick Leonard’s Modern British Prime Ministers from Balfour to Johnson surveys the lives and careers of all the 24 Prime Ministers from Arthur Balfour to Boris Johnson in succinct, informative and entertaining chapters. Bringing to life the political achievements and personal idiosyncrasies of Britain's rulers over the 20th and 21st centuries, the author recounts the circumstances which took them to the pinnacle of British political life, probes their political and personal strengths and weaknesses, assesses their performance in office and asks what lasting influence they have had. Along the way Leonard entertains and informs, revealing little-known facts about the private lives of each of the Prime Ministers, for example, which two Premiers, one Tory, one Labour were taught by the same governess as a child? Who was thrashed at his public school for writing pornography and later donated one-fifth of his wealth to the nation? Who was awarded a fourth-class degree at Oxford and went on to father eight children? Who was described by his son as ‘probably the greatest natural Don Juan in the history of British politics'? This book can also form part of a two-volume set published by Routledge including the companion volume British Prime Ministers from Walpole to Salisbury: The 18th and 19th Centuries. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and readers of British political history, the Executive, government, and British politics.

Secret lunches, off-the-record briefings, the leaking of confidential information and tightly-organised media launches - the well-known world of modern political spin. But is this really a new phenomenon or have politicians been manipulating the press for as long as newspapers have existed? In this important new book, Paul Brighton shows that spin is not something dreamed up by modern, media-savvy politicians. In fact, it was one of the best-kept political secrets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From Peel and Palmerston to Gladstone and Disraeli, Prime Ministers have all tried to manipulate the press to a greater or lesser extent. Brighton uncovers the covert contacts between Westminster and Fleet Street and reveals how the Victorian occupants of 10 Downing Street secretly conveyed their viewpoints via the newspapers. For the first time, "Original Spin" tells the whole, unvarnished, story.

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He illuminates, often for the first time, precise Prime Ministerial attitudes toward, and authority over, nuclear weapons policy, the planning and waging of war, and the secret services, as well as dealing with governmental overload, the Suez crisis, and the "Soviet threat." He concludes with a controversial assessment of the relative performance of each Prime Minister since 1945 and a new specification for the premiership as it meets its fourth century."--BOOK JACKET.

Following Never Again and Having It So Good, the third part of Peter Hennessy's celebrated Post-War Trilogy 'By far the best study of early Sixties Britain ... so much fun, yet still shrewd and important' The Times, Books of the Year Harold Macmillan famously said in 1960 that the wind of change was blowing over Africa and the remaining British Empire. But it was blowing over Britain too - its society; its relationship with Europe; its nuclear and defence policy. And where it was not blowing hard enough - the United Kingdom's economy - great efforts were made to sweep away the cobwebs of old industrial practices and poor labour relations. Life was lived in the knowledge that it could end in a single afternoon of thermonuclear exchange if the uneasy, armed peace of the Cold War tipped into a Third World War. In Winds of Change we see Macmillan gradually working out his 'grand design' - how to be part of both a tight transatlantic alliance and Europe, dealing with his fellow geostrategists Kennedy and de Gaulle. The centre of the book is 1963 - the year of the Profumo Crisis, the Great Train Robbery, the satire boom, de Gaulle's veto of Britain's first application to join the EEC, the fall of Macmillan and the unexpected succession to the premiership of Alec Douglas-Home. Then, in 1964, the battle of what Hennessy calls the tweedy aristocrat and the tweedy meritocrat - Harold Wilson, who would end 13 years of Conservative rule and usher in a new era. As in his acclaimed histories of British life in the two previous decades, Never Again and Having it so Good, Peter Hennessy explains the political, economic, cultural and social aspects of a nation with inimitable wit and empathy. No historian knows the by-ways as well the highways of the archives so well, and no one conveys the flavour of the period so engagingly. The early sixties live again in these pages.