Abstract
Few political memoirs of the Great War have been as influential or as controversial as Lloyd George’s War Memoirs. Over the years these volumes have made a significant contribution to shaping the historical and popular perceptions of the key events and especially the personalities of the 1914–18 conflict. When the Memoirs first appeared in 1933–36 the responses of critics and the reading public testify to the passionate reaction to his arguments and criticisms.1 In particular, many were outraged by the attacks on the generals, some praised the literary style and many the extensive documentation. It is no surprise that the Memoirs stirred controversy. The public and private memory of the war was still fresh in the minds of the adult population, and Lloyd George was an important figure in British politics even after his resignation in 1922.
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Notes
For a sample of reviews, see pp. 195–98; elsewhere, for a good survey of reviewer’s reception of the War Memoirs, see George W. Egerton, ‘The Lloyd George War Memoirs: A Study in the Politics of Memory’, Journal of Modern History, 60, 1, March 1988, pp. 78–86. For readers’ letters, see House of Lords Record Office (HLRO) Lloyd George MSS (hereafter LG MSS) G/236–38.
Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, 6 vols (London: Thornton and Butterworth, 1923–31).
Churchill’s The Second World War, 6 vols (London: Cassell, 1948–54), is, as Egerton suggests, a better comparison: ‘War Memoirs’, p. 86.
See, for example, A.J.P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary by Frances Stevenson (London: Hutchinson, 1971), p. 264.
Colin Cross (ed.), Life with Lloyd George: The Diary of A.J. Sylvester (London: Macmillan, 1975), p. 109.
For example, see Paul Johnson in the New Statesman, where he describes the War Memoirs as ‘unreadable’ and ‘unread’; 19 September 1969.
Quoted in Thomas Jones, Lloyd George (London: Oxford University Press, 1951), pp. 269.
Egerton, ‘War Memoirs’, pp. 58–61 and Peter Rowland, Lloyd George: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 572–73.
See Swinton’s memoir Over My Shoulder (Oxford: George Ronald, 1951), p. 224.
Although it was probably not the ‘National Government’ he would have wanted; on Lloyd George and the formation of the National Government, see Philip Williamson, National Crisis and National Government: British Politics, the Economy and Empire 1926–1932 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 275–76, 354–55.
Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, 3 vols (London: Macmillan, 1920).
C.E. Callwell (ed.), Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries, 2 vols (London: Cassell, 1927).
J.H. Boraston and G.A.B. Dewar, Sir Douglas Haig’s Command, December 19th 1915 to November 11th, 1918 (London: Constable, 1922);
Brigadier-General John Charteris, Field Marshal Earl Haig (London: Cassell, 1929).
Alfred Duff Cooper’s Haig, 2 vols (London: Faber & Faber, 1935–36), was still to come.
Nancy Maurice (ed.), The Maurice Case (London: Leo Cooper, 1972), pp. 181–207.
HLRO LG MSS G/212: Lloyd George to Hankey 10 April 1933. For a survey of the ‘battle of the memoirs’, see Ian Beckett, ‘Frocks and Brasshats’, in Brian Bond (ed.), The First World War and British Military History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 90–112.
A.J.P. Taylor (ed.), My Darling Pussy: The Letters of Lloyd George and Frances Stevenson 1913–41 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), p. 161
Lloyd George to Frances Stevenson 3 December 1931. Cf. Churchill’s tribute to Lloyd George in The World Crisis 1916–18 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1927), Part I, pp. 256–57.
Taylor (ed.), My Darling Pussy, 171, Lloyd George to Frances Stevenson, 31 December 1931.
On Sylvester, see his diaries edited by Colin Cross; on Frances Stevenson, apart from her diaries and letters edited by A.J.P. Taylor, see the biography by her grand daughter, Ruth Longford, Frances, Countess Lloyd-George: More than a Mistress (Leominster, Herefordshire: Gracewing, Fowler Wright Books, 1996).
On Hankey’s role in enforcing Cabinet secrecy and vetting ministerial memoirs, see John F. Naylor, A Man and an Institution: Sir Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretariat and the Custody of Official Secrecy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Egerton, ‘War Memoirs’, pp. 68–70; on Hankey and Lloyd George in particular, Naylor, A Man and an Institution, pp. 203–09; Peter Fraser, ‘Cabinet Secrecy and War Memoirs’, History, 70, 230, pp. 397–409 and Egerton, ‘War Memoirs’, pp. 69–71.
HLRO LG MSS G/212: Hankey to Lloyd George, 11 April 1933. On Liddell Hart, see the biography by Alex Danchev, Alchemist of War: The Life of Basil Liddell Hart (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998),
Brian Bond, Liddell Hart: A Study of his Military Thought (London: Cassell, 1977)
And John J. Mearsheimer, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988).
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© 2005 Andrew Suttie
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Suttie, A. (2005). Writing the War Memoirs 1931–36. In: Rewriting the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505599_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505599_2
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