Julie Gottlieb is Lecturer in History at University of Sheffield. She is author of 'Feminine Fascism' and co-author, with Thomas P. Linehan, of 'The Culture of Fascism' (both I.B. Tauris). Richard Toye is Lecturer in History at Homerton College, University of Cambridge.

'The contributions are never less than absorbing...'Trevor Russell, Public Servant, 7th October 2005

• List of Illustrations – viiContributors – viiiIntroduction. Richard Toye and Julie Gottlieb – 1Constructing Life Stories. Peter Marsh – 5Gladstonian Liberalism and the rehabilitation of Robert Lowe, 1866-1868. Kristin Zimmerman – 15‘Squiff’, ‘Lliar George’, and ‘The McKennae’: The unpersuasive politics of personality in the Asquith coalition, 1915-16. Martin Farr – 29Charismatic leadership, c. 1870-1914: A comparative European Perspective. Henk te Velde – 42An exemplary communist life? Harry Pollitt’s Serving My Time in comparative perspective. Kevin Morgan – 56A Mosleyite Life Stranger than Fiction: The Making and Remaking of Olive Hawks. Julie Gottlieb – 70Winston Churchill and the ‘Men of Destiny’: Leadership and the role of the Prime Minister in wartime feature films. Jo Fox – 92‘Let us go forward together’: Clementine Churchill and the role of the personality in wartime Britain. Helen Jones – 109The trials of a biography: Roy Harrod’s Life of John Maynard Keynes reconsidered. Richard Toye – 123‘Our Amazonian Colleague’: Edith Summerskill’s problematic reputation. Penny Summerfield – 135Michael Foot as Labour leader: the uses of the past. Paul Corthorn – 151‘I don’t think of myself as the first woman Prime Minister’: Gender, Identity and Image in Margaret Thatcher’s Career. Anneke Ribberink – 166New Labour and The Sun, 1994-97. Sam Gallagher – 180Notes – 198Index – 234