There have been four Liberals at the head of clearly Liberal governments – Gladstone, Rosebery, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith. Three of them are well-known names. Yet of the four, ‘CB’ was far and away the best party leader. […]

Amongst the number of outstanding statesmen in Victorian Britain, Gladstone was unquestionably the greatest. He brought to his public life an exceptional physical, mental and spiritual vitality. He was a man of independent but by no means unchanging mind. His combination of moral zeal and the willingness to think on and on, no doubt explains…

{…}It took Harcourt, like Gladstone, a long time to become a Liberal, but once this affiliation was decided, he became an active and prominent one. He did not completely fulfil his expected potential, being perhaps the classic case of the best Prime Minister we never had. But as a strong contender for another title, that…

[…]The pinnacle of Lloyd George’s career was the peace-making at Paris in the first half of 1919, leading to the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919. While rightly criticised in many aspects (such as the war guilt clause, the scale of reparations and many boundaries), Lloyd George tilted the settlement in a more…

Herbert Samuel was a leading figure in the Liberal Party for over fifty years, from its zenith before the First World War to the nadir of its fortunes in the mid-1950s. With Sinclair, he was the last independent Liberal to serve in the Cabinet. A respected statesman, formidable mediator and administrator, and notable political thinker,…