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Author: Frank Field
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441129448
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239
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Book Description
In 1946, Clement Attlee came to power as Labour Prime Minister with a huge landslide majority. Under his leadership, some of the greatest reforms were initiated, not least the founding of The National Health Service. Attlee had a firm vision of a more just and equitable society, which the nation wanted. This firm vision is something that attracts Frank Field. To Field, Attlee is a hero. After retirement, Clement Attlee wrote a masterly series of profiles of his great contemporaries, many published at the time in The Observer. These are now collected together in a book for the first time. They are of extraordinary historical interest and will command an audience in their own right. In them we see how Attlee emphasised the importance of character for successful politics. To Field they epitomise the intellect and humanity of a hero of 20th Century politics, a man with profound qualities that are so poorly represented in today's politics. In a brilliant and most controversial introduction, Frank Field argues just how radical Attlee was, wishing, for example, to realign British foreign and defence policy. In his epilogue, Professor Peter Hennessy, shows the importance of Attlee in full historical perspective.
Author: Frank Field
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441129448
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 239
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Book Description
In 1946, Clement Attlee came to power as Labour Prime Minister with a huge landslide majority. Under his leadership, some of the greatest reforms were initiated, not least the founding of The National Health Service. Attlee had a firm vision of a more just and equitable society, which the nation wanted. This firm vision is something that attracts Frank Field. To Field, Attlee is a hero. After retirement, Clement Attlee wrote a masterly series of profiles of his great contemporaries, many published at the time in The Observer. These are now collected together in a book for the first time. They are of extraordinary historical interest and will command an audience in their own right. In them we see how Attlee emphasised the importance of character for successful politics. To Field they epitomise the intellect and humanity of a hero of 20th Century politics, a man with profound qualities that are so poorly represented in today's politics. In a brilliant and most controversial introduction, Frank Field argues just how radical Attlee was, wishing, for example, to realign British foreign and defence policy. In his epilogue, Professor Peter Hennessy, shows the importance of Attlee in full historical perspective.
Author: Nick Thomas-Symonds
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755636155
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
A biography of a key figure in British political life, now with a new foreword by Keir Starmer, providing a vivid portrait of the man and his politics. Clement Attlee - the man who created the welfare state and decolonised vast swathes of the British Empire, including India - has been acclaimed by many as Britain's greatest twentieth-century Prime Minister. Yet somehow Attlee the man remains elusive. How did such a moderate, modest man bring about so many enduring changes? What are the secrets of his leadership style? And how do his personal attributes account for both his spectacular successes and his apparent failures? When Attlee became Prime Minister in July 1945 he was the leader of a Labour party that had won a landslide victory. With almost 50 percent of the popular vote, Attlee seemed to have achieved the platform for Labour to dominate post-war British politics. Yet just 6 years and 3 months after the 1945 victory, and despite all Attlee's governments had appeared to achieve, Labour was out of office, condemned to opposition for a further 13 years. This presents one of the great paradoxes of twentieth-century British history: how Attlee's government achieved so much, but lost power so quickly. But perhaps the greatest paradox was Attlee himself. Attlee's obituary in "The Times" in 1967 stated that 'much of what he did was memorable; very little that he said'. This new biography, based on extensive research into Attlee's papers and first-hand interviews, examines the myths that have arisen around this key figure of British political life, providing a vivid portrait of this man and his politics.
Author: John Bew
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190203404
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 705
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Book Description
Part I. Patriot, citizen, soldier, 1889-1918 -- Introduction: the red flag -- With apologies to Rudyard Kipling -- News from nowhere -- The soldier -- Part II. The making of a politician, 1918-1931 -- Looking backward -- Building Jerusalem -- Fame is the spur -- Part III. Albion's troubles, 1931-1940 -- The Bullion family -- The anti-Cromwell -- The Major Attlee company and the clenched-fist salute -- A word to Winston -- Part IV. Finest hour, 1940-1945 -- All behind you, Winston -- The hunting of the snark -- The invisible man -- Part V. New Jerusalem, New Deal, 1945-1947 -- To hope till hope creates -- English traits, American problems -- The British New Deal -- Empire into commonwealth -- Part VI. After New Jerusalem, 1948-1955 -- In Barchester all is not well -- Taxis, teeth and hospital beds -- The pilgrim's progress -- Part VII. Mission's end, 1955-1967 -- Few thought he was even a starter -- Epilogue: the promised land
Author: Michael Jago
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1849547580
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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Book Description
Elected in a surprise landslide in 1945, Clement Attlee was the first ever Labour leader to command a majority government. At the helm for twenty years, he remains the longest-serving leader in the history of the Labour Party. When he was voted out in 1951, he left with Labour's highest share of the vote before or since. And yet today he is routinely described as 'the accidental Prime Minister'. A retiring man, overshadowed by the flamboyant Churchill during the Second World War, he is dimly remembered as a politician who, by good fortune, happened to lead the Labour Party at a time when Britain was disillusioned with Tory rule and ready for change. In Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister, Michael Jago argues that nothing could be further from the truth. Raised in a haven of middle-class respectability, Attlee was appalled by the squalid living conditions endured by his near neighbours in London's East End. Seeing first-hand how poverty and insecurity dogged lives, he nourished a powerful ambition to achieve power and create a more egalitarian society. Rising to become Leader of the Labour Party in 1935, Attlee was single-minded in pursuing his goals, and in just six years from 1945 his government introduced the most significant features of post-war Britain: the National Health Service, extensive nationalisation of essential industry, and the Welfare State that Britons now take for granted. A full-scale reassessment, Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister traces the life of a middle-class lawyer's son who relentlessly pursued his ambition to lead a government that would implement far-reaching socialist reform and change forever the divisive class structure of twentieth-century Britain.
Author: John Bew
Publisher: Riverrun
ISBN: 9781780879925
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
**WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING** **WINNER OF THE ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY** *Book of the year: The Times, Sunday Times, New Statesman, Spectator, Evening Standard* 'Outstanding . . . We still live in the society that was shaped by Clement Attlee' Robert Harris, Sunday Times 'The best book in the field of British politics' Philip Collins, The Times 'Easily the best single-volume, cradle-to-grave life of Clement Attlee yet written' Andrew Roberts Clement Attlee was the Labour prime minister who presided over Britain's radical postwar government, delivering the end of the Empire in India, the foundation of the NHS and Britain's place in NATO. Called 'a sheep in sheep's clothing', his reputation has long been that of an unassuming character in the shadow of Churchill. But as John Bew's revelatory biography shows, Attlee was not only a hero of his age, but an emblem of it; and his life tells the story of how Britain changed over the twentieth century. Here, Bew pierces Attlee's reticence to examine the intellect and beliefs of Britain's greatest - and least appreciated - peacetime prime minister. This edition includes a new preface by the author in response to the 2017 general election.
Author: Robert Pearce
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135045380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
The origins of the post of Prime Minister can be traced back to the eighteenth century when Sir Robert Walpole became the monarch’s principal minister. From the dawn of the twentieth century to the early years of the twenty-first, however, both the power and the significance of the role have been transformed. British Prime Ministers from Balfour to Brown explores the personalities and achievements of those twenty individuals who have held the highest political office between 1902 and 2010. It includes studies of the dominant premiers who helped shape Britain in peace and war – Lloyd George, Churchill, Thatcher and Blair – as well as portraits of the less familiar, from Asquith and Baldwin to Wilson and Heath. Each chapter gives a concise account of its subject’s rise to power, ideas and motivations, and governing style, as well as examining his or her contribution to policy-making and handling of the major issues of the time. Robert Pearce and Graham Goodlad explore each Prime Minister’s interaction with colleagues and political parties, as well as with Cabinet, Parliament and other key institutions of government. Furthermore they assess the significance, and current reputation, of each of the premiers. This book charts both the evolving importance of the office of Prime Minister and the continuing restraints on the exercise of power by Britain’s leaders. These concise, accessible and stimulating biographies provide an essential resource for students of political history and general readers alike.
Author: Leo McKinstry
Publisher: Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1786495740
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 577
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Book Description
Throughout history there have been many long-running rivalries between party leaders, but there has never been a connection like that between Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill, who were leaders of their respective parties for a total of thirty-five years. Brought together in the epoch-making circumstances of the Second World War, they forged a partnership that transcended party lines, before going on to face each other in two of Britain's most important and influential general elections. Based on extensive research and archival material, Attlee and Churchill provides a host of new insights into their remarkable relationship. From the bizarre coincidence that they shared a governess, to their explosive wartime clashes over domestic policy and reconstruction; and from Britain's post-war nuclear weapons programme, which Attlee kept hidden from Churchill and his own Labour Party, to the private correspondence between the two men in later life, which demonstrates their friendliness despite all the political antagonism, Leo McKinstry tells the intertwined story of these two political titans as never before.In a gripping narrative McKinstry not only provides a fresh perspective on two of the most compelling leaders of the mid-twentieth century but also brilliantly brings to life this vibrant, traumatic and inspiring era of modern British history.
Author: Francis Beckett
Publisher: Haus Publishing
ISBN: 1910376213
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 480
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Book Description
As British prime minister from 1945 to 1951, Clement Attlee built a legacy that includes today’s famous—and controversial—National Health Service, yet he is often remembered as a rather dull political figure. Rejecting Winston Churchill’s jibe that Attlee was a “modest little man with plenty to be modest about,” this biography makes the case that his reputation as Britain’s greatest reforming prime minister is fully deserved. Building on his earlier work on Attlee and including new research and stories, many of which are published here for the first time, Francis Beckett highlights Attlee’s relevance for a new generation. A poet and dreamer, Attlee led a remarkable political life that saw, among other challenges, the beginning of the Cold War. Ultimately, this perceptive biography demonstrates that Attlee’s ideas have never been more relevant.
Author: James Attlee
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226030962
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
“Nobody who has not taken one can imagine the beauty of a walk through Rome by full moon,” wrote Goethe in 1787. Sadly, the imagination is all we have today: in Rome, as in every other modern city, moonlight has been banished, replaced by the twenty-four-hour glow of streetlights in a world that never sleeps. Moonlight, for most of us, is no more. So James Attlee set out to find it. Nocturne is the record of that journey, a traveler’s tale that takes readers on a dazzling nighttime trek that ranges across continents, from prehistory to the present, and through both the physical world and the realms of art and literature. Attlee attends a Buddhist full-moon ceremony in Japan, meets a moon jellyfish on a beach in Northern France, takes a moonlit hike in the Arizona desert, and experiences a lunar eclipse on New Year’s Eve atop the snowbound Welsh hills. Each locale is illuminated not just by the moonlight he seeks, but by the culture and history that define it. We learn about Mussolini’s pathological fear of moonlight; trace the connections between Caspar David Friedrich, Rudolf Hess, and the Apollo space mission; and meet the inventors of the Moonlight Collector in the American desert, who aim to cure all kinds of ailments with concentrated lunar rays. Svevo and Blake, Whistler and Hokusai, Li Po and Marinetti are all enlisted, as foils, friends, or fellow travelers, on Attlee’s journey. Pulled by the moon like the tide, Attlee is firmly in a tradition of wandering pilgrims that stretches from Basho to Sebald; like them, he presents our familiar world anew.
Author: James Attlee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786691434
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
A brilliant, concise account of the painting often described as the most important work of art produced in the twentieth century, as part of the stunning Landmark Library series. Pablo Picasso had already accepted a commission to create a work for the Spanish Republican Pavilion in 1937 when news arrived of the bombing of the undefended Basque town of Gernika. James Attlee offers an illuminating account of the genesis, creation and complex afterlife of Picasso's Guernica. He explores the historical and cultural context from which the painting sprang and the meanings it accrued during its travels across Europe and the Americas, as well as its influence on artists both living and dead. Finally, he argues for its continuing importance as a warning of what happens when the forces of darkness go unchallenged. Praise for Guernica: 'Helps you appreciate Guernica's daring and resonance' Literary Review 'An impressive overview of the painting's conception and execution, and its subsequent life as an exhibit and a symbol... Attlee's book succeeds in showing how influential Guernica has been' Sunday Times 'Attlee digs up rich examples of the debate and devotion that invariably attended the painting... Guernica literature abounds; but this book is a worthwhile addition' Spectator
