Decolonization has had a significant impact upon the way that historians explain the process of Europe’s late nineteenth-century imperial expansion. Assumptions about superior technology now appear insufficient in themselves to account for the ability of relatively small armies to gain control over sizeable territory and populations in Africa and Asia. Although, as has recently been argued, advances in weaponry and medicine enabled Europeans to operate in tropical climates against less sophisticated opposition with devastating effect, differences in technology cannot explain the ability of less well-endowed national resistance movements to defeat colonial armies in the mid-twentieth century.1 Since 1945 various wars of national liberation have demonstrated that advanced technology, an impressive commitment of manpower, and an enormous expenditure of money cannot guarantee military success against a nationalist resistance in a colonial setting. If anything, this discrepancy in technological advantage between colonialist powers and anti-western resistance movements was as great or greater in the post-World War II era than in the late nineteenth century. Historians thus must seek additional explanations for the rapid advance of European conquest during the heyday of imperialism.

On 22 June 1897 the Queen-Empress Victoria drove in splendid, imperial state to St Paul's Cathedral, the ‘parish church of the Empire’ there to give thanks for reaching the sixtieth year of her reign. It was, in life, her supreme moment of apotheosis as the matriarch of Europe and mother-figure of an empire of unprecedented size, power and prosperity. Not only in London, but in towns and villages throughout England and around the world, the celebrations extended. ‘From one end of the land to the other’, recalled one provincial newspaper, ‘and indeed wherever the British flag flies, the day was marked in a special manner.’ ‘Everywhere in the Empire that day’, notes James Morris, ‘statues were being unveiled, garrisons were being inspected, thanksgiving services were being held in thatch-roofed outposts of the Anglican communion.’

Most historians of modern France would agree that the quarrel between clericals and anticlericals was one of the most significant political issues in French politics between 1870 and 1914, especially in the period before the passing of the law which separated Church and State in 1905. The charges brought against the Catholic Church by the anticlericals were many, but until recently few students of nineteenth-century France have commented on the fact that one of their most serious allegations was that the Church oppressed women. Perhaps the most celebrated formulation of this theory came from the pen of the historian Michelet who, in a virulent polemic entitled Priests, women and the family, bitterly attacked the powers which priests were reputed to exercise over the female mind through the institution of the confessional, to the great detriment of marital life and family unity.

It is generally agreed that the body of legislation passed by the Liberal governments after 1905 represented a uniquely important contribution to the problems of social policy in the twentieth century. The attitude of the Unionist opposition of these years to such matters has, however, received little attention. Yet the posture taken by the Unionists was, it will be suggested, of crucial importance in the development of the party in this period, playing a major part in the determination of its electoral fortunes. An appropriate starting point for this study is the reaction of the Unionist leader, Arthur Balfour, to the electoral disaster of 1906, in which he personally had lost his parliamentary seat. ‘What is going on here’, he argued, ‘is the faint echo of the same movement which has produced massacres in St Petersburg, riots in Vienna and Socialist processions in Berlin… We are face to face (no doubt in a milder form) with the Socialist difficulties which loom so large on the Continent. Unless I am greatly mistaken, the Election of 1906 inaugurates a new era.’

A decade ago there appeared a volume of twelve essays on Lloyd George, written by a dozen young historians and edited by A. J. P. Taylor. These pieces, of varying merit and degree of interest, ranged widely from pre-1914 social reform to the Greek question and even to the Second World War.1 Yet strangely enough one of the most colourful patches of the huge canvas that was Lloyd George's life did not receive so much as a passing glance - namely his relations with the press. Taylor had hinted at the possibilities in that sphere when preparing a volume of his own essays a few years earlier. There he placed in sequence two entertaining chapters of quite unequal length and importance, one entitled ‘Lloyd George: rise and fall’ and the other ‘The Chief’.2 The latter requires a little explanation, for ‘ Chief was the style of address beloved of Alfred Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe, the man who owned The Times, Daily Mail, Evening News, and a host of other newspapers and journals. Quite simply he was the greatest press lord of them all, and Fleet Street has known many. While it is manifestly impossible in a few pages to explore in detail the full story of Lloyd George and the press, we can profitably follow his relations with Lord Northcliffe during the years 1914 to 1918 when these two giants were at the peak of their power and their fortunes were intertwined in many and strange ways. During the war Northcliffe was frequently called (and with utmost seriousness) ‘The Most Powerful Man in the Country’, while at the end Lloyd George was ‘The Man Who Won the War’. Often it seemed that the stage was not big enough for both and the British people must choose between them. Not until 1918 did two events - the ‘Maurice debate’ and the ‘Coupon election’ - prove conclusively that in the final analysis Lloyd George's power was real while Northcliffe's was largely illusory. Perhaps none was more surprised at this outcome, certainly none was more relieved, than Lloyd George himself. The reasons will become apparent as the history of their wartime relationship unfolds.

Systematic military policy-making towards internal security in Great Britain dates from the period immediately following the First World War. It was stimulated above all by widespread fears of possible revolution, sharpened by a belief in the collective incapacity of police forces to deal with civil disorder. Many, although by no means all, politicians and senior officials felt that the labour militancy of the 1920s was simply the harbinger of ‘red’ revolt, and preparations were made accordingly. Following the trade unions’ defeat in the general strike of 1926 fears of revolution subsided, although the War Office continued to revise the plans it had made in the early 1920s. Throughout the entire inter-war period, nevertheless, the general staff displayed an extreme reluctance to commit the army to internal security duties. Almost without exception, it seems, military men shared Lord Ironside’s opinion that ‘for a soldier there is no more distasteful duty than that of aiding the Civil Power’.

The work of one member of the British intelligence mission in Russia was once described as ‘consist[ing] chiefly in passing little notes to other noodles of his calling all over the world to warn them of this or that innocent and bar their exit from or entry to all and sundry countries’. Others, even less charitable, characterized the intelligence mission and the war propaganda bureau as ‘joy rides’ and dismissed them entirely, discounting as worthless their efforts to promote closer understanding and coordination between Britain and her eastern ally.

President Truman celebrated the birth of the central intelligence agency with a private lunch at the White House on 24 January 1946. He invited the first director of central intelligence, Admiral Sidney Souers, and the president's chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy. Truman appeared with wooden daggers and black hats and coats which he presented to his guests.

It has been said of Lloyd George that ‘coming into the British system from outside, he had no respect for its traditions or accepted formalities… Most of all, he distrusted the permanent officials’. His reliance on the Garden Suburb, and what Milner described as his tendency ‘to settle things that really mattered, or unsettle them, in his own favourite way — by devious methods and through anything but the regular agents’, could be seen as evidence which supports this view. However, it was also during Lloyd George's premiership that two of the most influential officials of the interwar period, Sir Maurice Hankey and Sir Warren Fisher, acquired the standing which they held until their retirements in 1938 and 1939 respectively. Like the men of the Garden Suburb, they owed their success to Lloyd George and were personally devoted to him, but while the Garden Suburb came and went with its creator, Hankey and Fisher survived his departure. Lloyd George, the supreme individùalist as prime minister, bequeathed to his successors not the amorphous, ill-defined government machine which he had inherited from Asquith in 1916, but a reorganized and newly centralized public service.