20 British Prime Ministers of the 20th Century – serie

This is a biography of the first Prime Minister of the 20th Century during the height of the British Empire.

The British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour led an eventual premiership, but will always be remembered for the 'Balfour Declaration', in which he told Lord Rothschild that Britain 'favoured the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish People'.

Roy Hattersley brings the politician's to this concise history of the life of Henry Campbell-Bannerman, widely considered to be an ineffective Prime Minister; he was in fact the liberal of the 20th century to occupy the post.

Asquith's administration laid the foundation of Britain's welfare state, but he was plunged into a major power struggle with the House of Lords. The budget of 1909 was vetoed by the hereditary upper chamber, and in 1910 Asquith called and won two elections on this constitutional issue. The Lords eventually passed the 1911 Parliament Act, ending their veto of financial legislation. Asquith was Prime Minister on the outbreak of World War I, but his government fell in 1916 as a result of the 'Shells Scandal'.

David Lloyd George was Britain’s Prime Minister between 1916 and 1922. By the end of 1916 there was discontent with Herbert Henry Asquith’s management of the war and Lloyd George schemed secretly with the Conservatives in the coalition government to take his place as Prime Minister. The main issue of the postwar years was Ireland, where Lloyd George brought to a partial end the long-running problem of Home Rule by giving independence in 1921 to the Irish Free State. After a clear Conservative victory in the election of 1922, Lloyd George never again  held office.

Bonar Law was a prominent opponent of Home Rule for Ireland; he also served the shortest term of any of Britain's 20th century Prime Ministers. In 1922 he was responsible for ending the coalition.

Stanley Baldwin's cultivated image of the plain man, Mr Suburbia', helped him cope with two of the greatest domestic political crises of the first half of twentieth century Britain, the General Strike and the Abdication.

In 1929 Labour was for the first time the largest party, but his new government had to grapple with the problems of the Great Depression.

With the agreement at Munich in 1938 he effectively abandoned Czechoslovakia, but immediately accelerated Britain's rearmament programme and the following year declared that Britain would defend Poland. This commitment led, in September 1939, to the start of World War II.

When Churchill died, one might have thought that it was not a man who was being borne to his grave, but British history itself - a resplendent, fortunate history whose last illustrious chapter Churchill himself had written almost a quarter of a century before.

Famously beating Churchill in the 1945 election, Attlee's post-war government enacted a broad programme of socialist legislation in spite of conditions of austerity in which rationing was actually extended. He also gave independence to India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Burma.

Paradoxically his success with the USA jeopardised his efforts to get Britain into the European Economic Community, for it was one of the reasons why the French President Charles de Gaulle vetoed Britain's application to join in 1963.

Douglas-Home had a complex career between the two Houses of Parliament, disclaiming his peerage to become Prime Minister. His term in office was short elected in 1963 he lost the election of 1964.

Harold Wilson held out the promise of technology and of 'the Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution'. A balance of payment crisis, leading to devaluation in 1967, frustrated the fulfilment of his prime ministerial promises. Meanwhile foreign affairs were dominated by the issue of Rhodesia, in which Wilson took a personal initiative in diplomacy with Ian Smith but failed to make any progress.

A passionate European, Edward Heath succeeded in taking Britain into the European Community. He was latter challenged for the leadership of the party by Margaret Thatcher who sidelined him during her period in office.

Callaghan term in office was dominated by industrial unrest, culminating in the Winter of Discontent', laying the foundations for Margaret Thatcher's election victory in 1979

John Major succeeded Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, but his initial popularity soon faded with the devaluation of the sterling, his achievement at Maastricht which brought division to his party and he oversaw the longest recession since WW2.

Tony Blair (b. 1953, Prime Minister 1997–2007) was elected as the MP for Sedgefield in 1983, as leader of the Labour Party in 1994, and as Prime Minister in a Labour landslide in 1997. He was the last British Prime Minister of the 20th century and the second longest-serving after Margaret Thatcher. For many a controversial figure during the later years of his premiership, Blair was often accused of abandoning Cabinet government through his introduction of a presidential style of leadership.