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David Lloyd George

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1863-1945
UK politician

  1. Introduction
  2. Stories
  3. Biographical summary
  4. See also
  5. Further reading
  6. References

1. Introduction

Lloyd George is the only UK prime minister from Wales to date and the only one to speak English as a second language. He was the last Liberal prime minister, losing office in 1922. He and Churchill held many of the same offices of state, experienced political ‘wilderness years’, and led their country during a world war. They forged a long, supportive relationship, even after their politics diverged. Lloyd George rescued Churchill’s career after Gallipoli by appointing him to cabinet positions. Despite Lloyd George’s pro-appeasement views, Churchill offered him a cabinet position in 1940, although this was declined. Lloyd George died shortly before the war ended, aged 82.

2. Stories

  • David Lloyd George used his middle name as part of his surname whereas Churchill often used part of his surname as a middle name.
  • The long careers of Lloyd George and Churchill had much in common.
  • The political aspect of the friendship between Lloyd George and Churchill has been much debated.
  • Lloyd George and Churchill both overturned convention and took on the establishment, with differing motivations.
  • Lloyd George and Churchill were involved in various controversies in their time and were fortunate to escape others.
  • Lloyd George and Churchill were known as two of the best orators of their time.
  • Lloyd George’s bristling moustache was a long-lasting product of its time whereas Churchill’s attempt at facial hair was short-lived.

David Lloyd George used his middle name as part of his surname whereas Churchill often used part of his surname as a middle name.

David George was born in Manchester to Welsh parents William George, a teacher, and Elizabeth Lloyd, whose surname was given to her son as a middle name. Two months later, they moved to Pembrokeshire in southwest Wales where his father died of pneumonia the following year. His mother moved to Caernarfonshire in northwest Wales where she lived with her brother Richard Lloyd, a shoemaker, nonconformist lay preacher and ardent Liberal.

Richard had a profound effect on the young David, laying the foundation of his egalitarian, reformist views. David left school at age 15 but passed Law Society exams while attached to a nearby law firm. His uncle provided him with a room in his house to start his own practice. He became the UK’s only prime minister to have been a solicitor; 16 other lawyer prime ministers trained as barristers.

Early in his career, David started using the surname Lloyd George (unhyphenated), unlike his brother William, also a solicitor; hence their joint practice was known as ‘Lloyd George and George’. It is sometimes said that the ‘Lloyd’ was to honour his uncle, but historian A.J.P. Taylor indicates that he simply did not like the surname George. As an avid Welshman, perhaps it sounded too English to him.

Unlike his adopted surname, his title is hyphenated: 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor. The hyphenation is a titular requirement; hence Andrew Lloyd Webber became Baron Lloyd-Webber. Dwyfor is the name of the river beside which he is buried in Caernarfonshire, at one of his favourite places.

He led Irish treaty negotiations in 1920, during which he made a point of speaking Welsh with his secretary, Thomas Jones, perhaps to indicate his non-English background to the Irish, and also enabling him to point out that neither the Welsh nor Irish language has a native word for ‘republic’.*

Churchill, on the other hand, preferred to drop the first part of his hyphenated surname Spencer-Churchill, and would often sign himself as Winston S. Churchill or W.S.C., as though Spencer was a middle name.

* Irish for ‘Republic of Ireland’ is Poblacht na hÉireann. Poblacht is derived from pobal (‘people’) and was only coined in 1916.

The long careers of Lloyd George and Churchill had much in common.

Lloyd George held a number of ministerial offices before Churchill took on the same roles: president of the Board of Trade, minister of munitions, secretary of state for war, chancellor of the exchequer and ultimately prime minister. Both presided over war cabinets, Lloyd George in World War I and Churchill in World War II. Each offered the other cabinet positions: Churchill gladly accepted the position of minister of munitions in 1917 but Lloyd George turned down the offer of minister of agriculture in 1940, as well as the non-cabinet position of ambassador to the USA.

Both represented the UK as part of the Big Three during war and post-war negotiations: Lloyd George met with Woodrow Wilson of the USA and Georges Clemenceau of France at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919-20; Churchill met with Franklin D. Roosevelt of the USA (replaced by Harry Truman on Roosevelt’s death in April 1945) and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union in World War II.

Lloyd George and Churchill were the two longest serving MPs in the twentieth century, with the former serving for 55 years and the latter for nearly 62.* The longest ever served only a year more than Churchill: Charles Pelham Villiers, an MP until 1898. Lloyd George and Churchill were both Father of the House (the longest continuously serving MP in the Commons), Lloyd George from 1929 to 1945 and Churchill from 1959 to 1964.

Both were party rebels, with Lloyd George forming two factions of Liberals, one after the other, dividing the party. Churchill rebelled against the Conservatives and then against the Liberals, crossing the floor twice.

As prime ministers, both developed a ‘presidential’ style of leadership, adopting considerably more powers than their predecessors, facilitated by wartime urgencies. Lloyd George centralised control in a five-person war cabinet, a cabinet secretariat and a group of five special advisors. Churchill was minister of defence in addition to his role as prime minister. Their heroes were strong military leaders: Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln in Lloyd George’s case, and the 1st Duke of Marlborough, Napoleon and Jan Smuts in the case of Churchill.

* Churchill’s 62 years do not include interruptions in 1908 and 1922-24; his first and last years as an MP were 64 years apart.

The political aspect of the friendship between Lloyd George and Churchill has been much debated.

The two knew each other from 1901, meeting after Churchill’s maiden speech as an MP. In 1938, Lloyd George described their relationship as ‘the longest friendship in British politics’,1 despite also often repeating Gladstone’s saying that ‘There is no friendship at the top’.2 In 1955, Churchill said that ‘Whether in or out of office, our intimate and agreeable companionship was never darkened, so far as I can recall, by any serious spell of even political hostility’.3

After Lloyd George brought Churchill into his cabinet in 1917, they would spend about an hour a day in deep discussion. Their detractors described them as the ‘Heavenly Twins’, ‘Two Romeos’, ‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee’, and so on. In the early years, the balance of power in the relationship was heavily in Lloyd George’s favour, with Churchill complaining that it resembled a master and servant. They were on more of an equal footing in their joint wilderness years in the 1930s, and Churchill had the upper hand in the 1940s.

Their relationship may have incorporated a political pact, suggested by Winston’s letter to Clementine in June 1911 saying that he and Lloyd George had ‘renewed treaties of alliance for another seven years’.4 Behind the scenes, they could be brutal about each other. Soon after meeting Lloyd George, Churchill wrote, ‘Personally, I think Lloyd George a vulgar, chattering little cad.’5 While on the Western Front in January 1916, he wrote that Lloyd George would not be sorry if he (Churchill) were killed, although Lloyd George would find it politically inconvenient. Lloyd George’s mistress Frances Stevenson recorded Lloyd George’s comment that Churchill ‘would make a drum out of the skin of his mother in order to sound his own praises’.6

However, the jostling of two headstrong and powerful individuals was part and parcel of a long-term relationship in which they recognised and benefited from each other’s abilities. Regardless of their cultivated public image and perhaps downplayed private rivalry, they had a genuine respect and liking for each other. Immediately after the ‘drum and skin’ quote above in her diary, Stevenson wrote, ‘But D. [David] & Winston love each other, & have never quarrelled throughout.’7

Lloyd George and Churchill both overturned convention and took on the establishment, with differing motivations.

Both were disrupters by character who used their sharp minds and way with words to challenge the status quo. They were both outsiders, Lloyd George to a greater extent than Churchill. Lloyd George’s upbringing was not just nonconformist (Protestant, non-Church of England); his family affiliation to the Campbellite Baptists was seen as extreme by many nonconformists. He was not part of ‘the Dukes’, as he referred to the gentry, and was determined to do what he could to change the political and social system.

He was suspicious of Churchill’s aristocratic background, but Churchill frequently chose to place himself outside the norms of his class, including his strong opposition to Nazi appeasement that many aristocrats and others (including Lloyd George) advocated. Churchill challenged the establishment to wake up to the threat of fascism in the 1930s and the threat of communism in the late 1940s. Although he had high respect for many traditions and institutions, his unconventional thinking and behaviour made him many opponents.

Lloyd George’s motivations were primarily empathy, egalitarianism and anger; Churchill’s were largely self-promotion, a sense of destiny and a zest for life. Their vastly different approaches were noted by Lord Hankey, imagining them being involved in a conversation about balloons. ‘Winston, without a blink, will give you a brilliant hour-long lecture on balloons. L.G., even if he has never seen you before, will spend an hour finding out anything you know or think about them.’8 There was a saying in their time that ‘L.G. was born a cad and never forgot it; Winston was born a gentleman and never remembered it.’9

Churchill and Lloyd George are two of only eight prime ministers who did not attend university after school, the most recent of whom was John Major (some others attended university but did not complete degrees). Lloyd George’s Law Society qualification was with third class honours; Churchill struggled to gain entrance to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, but graduated reasonably respectably at twentieth out of 130. The only other UK prime minister with a post-school military education was Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, at the Royal Academy of Equitation in Angers, western France.

Lloyd George and Churchill were involved in various controversies in their time and were fortunate to escape others.

Many of the strong reactions against the two men were provoked by their political stances, such as their joint advocacy of Liberal social reforms. Some other controversies, however, were not about policy. In 1913, for example, Lloyd George bought shares in communications company Marconi shortly before it was awarded a large government contract, in a move now known as ‘insider trading’. He and others were cleared in a parliamentary investigation in which Churchill testified in his favour. Churchill also persuaded his friend Lord Birkenhead, a Conservative MP, to represent the Liberal Lloyd George in a related libel case.

A ‘cash for honours’ scandal broke in 1922 when it emerged that Lloyd George had been selling titles at prices from £10,000 for a knighthood to £40,000 for a baronetcy (equivalent to around £450,000 and £1.8 million today). The funds went to both Liberal and Conservative coffers as part of his fledgling concept of a new united party. It is estimated that he sold around 100 honours for a total of one to two million pounds (£45-90 million today). It was not illegal at the time but became so after the ensuing outcry.

Remarkably, he managed to escape significant scandal during his lifetime in relation to his sexual appetite, for which he was privately known as ‘the Goat’. His principal private secretary A.J. Sylvester wrote, ‘He has lived a life of duplicity. He has got clean away with it.’10 His son Richard wrote that ‘With an attractive woman he was as much to be trusted as a Bengal tiger with a gazelle’.11 Frances Stevenson was his mistress from about 1913, initially his children’s tutor and later his secretary. He married her in 1943, two years after his wife Maggie died.

For controversies involving Churchill, political and otherwise, see Controversies.

Lloyd George and Churchill were known as two of the best orators of their time.

Lloyd George was a natural firebrand speaker whereas Churchill used carefully crafted scripts in a more measured tone. Both often used biting wit to advance their arguments. Many of Churchill’s sayings are well known, but Lloyd George’s wit and wisdom are also noteworthy.

Describing the House of Lords, Lloyd George said that it consisted of ‘five hundred ordinary men chosen accidentally from among the unemployed’.12 About Churchill, he said, ‘He has half a dozen solutions to any problem and one of them is right – but the trouble is he does not know which it is.’13 On visiting Lord Beaverbrook and being told he was out for a walk, Lloyd George replied, ‘Ah, on the water, I presume.’14 Diplomats frustrated him: he declared that they ‘were invented simply to waste time’.15 During a budget dispute, he said, ‘A fully-equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts [battleships], and dukes are just as great a terror and they last longer.’16

His advice to a young man, Julian Amery, who intended to join the navy was that ‘There are many greater storms in politics. If it’s piracy you want with broadsides, boarding parties, walking the plank and blood on the deck, this is the place.’*17 Amery decided that night to enter politics and later became a Conservative minister.

As with other public figures, some quotes often attributed to Lloyd George are unproven, including ‘The most dangerous thing in the world is try to leap a chasm in two jumps’ and ‘With me, a change of trouble is as good as a vacation’.

One of Lloyd George’s most rousing speeches was in Limehouse, east London, in 1909. He had recently visited a coal mine in Wales and gave a vivid description of the dangers of mutilation and death. The landholders, he said, were receiving untaxed royalties for no risk, but the financier was jeopardising capital and the miner was risking life. The landholders ‘never deposited the coal there’, he said. ‘It was not they who planted these great granite rocks in Wales, who laid the foundations of the mountains.’18 It caused outrage amongst the aristocracy, his intended audience.

* Paraphrased versions are commonly found on the internet.

Lloyd George’s bristling moustache was a long-lasting product of its time whereas Churchill’s attempt at facial hair was short-lived.

Although moustaches without a beard are less popular today (except perhaps when growing a ‘mo’ in November – ‘Movember’ – for charity fundraising), they were the standard in some earlier times and even de rigueur in certain circles, particularly military. In 1854, it became compulsory for soldiers in the East India Company in Bombay to have moustaches, partly because hairless faces were identified in some parts of Asia as a sign of weakness. It was also derived from the French military habit of growing facial hair to demonstrate virility, with French infantry soldiers becoming known approvingly as poilus (‘hairy ones’).

In 1860, the moustache requirement was applied to the whole British Army. Command Number 1695 of the King’s Regulations said: ‘The chin and the under lip will be shaved, but not the upper lip. Whiskers, if worn, will be of moderate length.’19

Emulating soldiers, civilians started growing moustaches, producing styles such as the handlebar, horseshoe, imperial and walrus. Special teacups and soup spoons were designed to prevent moustaches from getting wet. Popularity began to wane by the 1880s after research by Louis Pasteur and others into germs, raising doubts about the hygiene of hirsuteness.

The military requirement for a hairy upper lip was removed in 1916 because moustaches interfered with the seal of a gas mask and many young World War I recruits struggled to produce acceptable results. Soldiers who persisted had to make moustaches narrower to fit inside masks. Before the war, Hitler had a small handlebar; he then adopted his well-known toothbrush style. Although not a soldier, Lloyd George narrowed his moustache slightly.

Churchill did not emulate his father’s handlebar. He grew a somewhat weak moustache during the Second Boer War which he retained on returning to the UK. He was introduced to a young woman who said that there were two things she did not like about him: his new moustache and his new political party (the Liberals). He replied, ‘Pray do not disturb yourself, you are not likely to come into contact with either’.20 However, her comment may have hit home, as the moustache soon disappeared, never to return.

3. Biographical summary

OccupationSolicitor, politician
CountryUK
CareerSolicitor (1884-90). MP for Caernarvon Boroughs (1890-1945). President of the Board of Trade (1905-08). Chancellor of the Exchequer (1908-15). Minister of Munitions (1915-16). Secretary of State for War (1916). Prime Minister (1916-22). Chief British representative to Paris Peace Conference (1919). Liberal Leader in the Commons (1924-31). Leader of the British Liberal Party (1926-31). Became Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor (1945) and Viscount Gwynedd (1945).
Born1863 in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, Lancashire (11 years older than Churchill); later incorporated ‘Lloyd’ into his surname from his uncle Richard Lloyd (mother’s brother)
FatherWilliam George (1820-64), schoolteacher; died age 44 from pneumonia when David was aged one
MotherElizabeth Lloyd (1828–96), daughter of David Lloyd, shoemaker and Baptist minister; her brother Richard Lloyd (1834-1917) helped to raise David
SiblingsSecond of three children:
1. Mary (1862-1909); married Captain Philip Davies
2. David (1863-1945)
3. William (1865-1967), solicitor, chairman of the Central Welsh Board (education body)
EducationAnglican church school, Llanystymdwy, Wales, until age 15; passed Law Society exams while attached to a law firm in Portmadoc, Caernarfonshire
Spouses1. Margaret ‘Maggie’ Owen (1864-1941), m. 1888 until her death in 1941; daughter of a wealthy farmer
2. Frances Stevenson (1888-1972), m. 1943 until Lloyd George’s death in 1945; married when she was 55 and Lloyd George was 80; daughter of a Scottish farmer; tutor to Lloyd George’s daughter Megan; private secretary to Lloyd George
RelationshipsNumerous including Frances Stevenson (1913 until their marriage in 1943)
ChildrenBy Margaret Owen:
1. Richard (1889-1968), 2nd Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor; army officer and engineer; first wife was Roberta, daughter of Sir Robert McAlpine
2. Mair (1890-1907); died aged 17 during an appendectomy
3. Olwen (1892-1990), married Major Sir Thomas John Carey Evans, army surgeon; great-grandmother of television presenter Dan Snow via Eluned Evans (married Robert MacMillan) whose daughter Ann MacMillan married television presenter Peter Snow
4. Gwilym (1894-1967), army officer; Liberal then Conservative MP; Home Secretary 1954-57; 1st Viscount Tenby
5. Megan (1902-66), Liberal then Labour MP; first female Welsh MP; Deputy Leader of Liberal Party 1949-51
By Frances Stevenson (alleged by son Richard, although the father was possibly Thomas Tweed):
6. Jennifer (1927-2012), teacher; married Michael Longford
Allegations of one or two other children by mistresses
Died1945 in Tŷ Newydd, Caernarfonshire, Wales, aged 82 (20 years before Churchill); cancer
BuriedDavid Lloyd George Memorial Site on the banks of the River Dwyfor, Llanystumdwy, Gwynedd, Wales
Chartwell 
Other ClubYes
NicknameThe Welsh Wizard; the (Welsh) Goat (for his sexual appetite)
Height5’6½” (1.68 m)

4. See also

Churchill and Lloyd George cooperation

Other UK prime ministers

Welsh connections

Churchill controversies

  • Anti-appeasement
  • Radical Liberalism
  • Self-promotion

5. Further reading

Lloyd George

  • Hattersley, Roy, David Lloyd George: The Great Outsider (Little, Brown, 2010)
  • Morgan, Kenneth O. ‘Number 10 under Lloyd George 1916-1922’ (GOV.UK History of Government, 2012)
  • Pugh, Martin, Lloyd George (Taylor & Francis, 2014)
  • Purcell, Hugh, Lloyd George (Haus Publishing, 2006)
  • Wilkinson, Richard, Lloyd George: Statesman or Scoundrel (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018)

Lloyd George and Churchill

  • Lloyd George, Robert, David & Winston: How the Friendship Between Lloyd George and Churchill Changed the Course of History (ABRAMS, 2008)
  • Rintala, Marvin, Lloyd George and Churchill: How Friendship Changed Politics (Madison Books, 2000)
  • Toye, Richard, Lloyd George & Churchill: Rivals for Greatness (Pan Macmillan, 2007)

Lloyd George and women

  • Campbell, John, If Love Were All …: The Story of Frances Stevenson and David Lloyd George (Penguin Random House, 2007)
  • Hague, Ffion, The Pain and the Privilege: The Women in Lloyd George’s Life (Harper Perennial, 2009)

History of facial hair

Political put-downs

  • Knight, G., Dishonourable Insults: A Cantankerous Collection of Political Invective (Biteback Publishing, 2011)

6. References

1. Richard Toye, Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness (Pan Macmillan, 2012), p. 297.

2. Anthony Jay, Lend Me Your Ears: Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 190.

3. Hansard, ‘Earl Lloyd-George Of Dwyfor (Monument)’, Hansard, 1955.

4. Winston S. Churchill and Clementine Churchill, Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, ed. by Mary Soames (Black Swan, 1999), p. 50.

5. Toye, p. 26.

6. Frances Stevenson, Lloyd George: A Diary, ed. by A.J.P. Taylor (Hutchinson, 1971), p. 253.

7. Stevenson, p. 253.

8. Toye, p. 1.

9. Ibid.

10. A.J. Sylvester, Life with Lloyd George: The Diary of A. J. Sylvester, 1931-45, ed. by Colin Cross (Barnes & Noble, 1975), p. 317.

11. Richard Lloyd George, Lloyd George (F. Muller, 1960), p. 232.

12. UK Parliament, ‘David Lloyd George (1863-1945)’, UK Parliament.

13. The Dictionary of Liberal Quotations, ed. by Duncan Brack (Biteback Publishing, 2013), p. 000.

14. Jay, p. 189.

15. Alan J. Sharp, ‘The Foreign Office in Eclipse 1919–22’, History, 61.202 (1976), 198–218 (p. 198).

16. Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: Volume 2: Young Statesman, 1901–1914 (Houghton Mifflin, 1966), p. 314.

17. Julian Amery, Approach March: A Venture in Autobiography (Hutchinson, 1973), p. 46.

18. Budget League, The Budget, the Land and the People: The New Land Value Taxes Explained and Illustrated (Methuen, 1909), p. 56.

19. Samantha Flaum, ‘The Mustache Law – British Soldiers Were Required to Have Hairy Upper Lips’, The Vintage News, 2019.

20. Winston S. Churchill, Churchill’s Wit, ed. by Richard M. Langworth (Random House, 2009), p. 15.