Paul Bryant's Reviews > The Prime Ministers: 55 Leaders, 55 Authors, 300 Years of History

There are some funny examples of the Peter Principle at work here – this is where a person is very good at their various jobs in an organisation but is finally promoted to the job they can’t do. We just lived through the three gruesome years of Theresa May, Queen Midas in Reverse, and you had to ask yourself, as she was continually presented with betrayals and treacheries and calamities and situations she could not rise to why on earth did she want that job in the first place? For her it was a vale of suffering and tears.

In British history there are so many famous names that I know almost nothing about so this was a great one stop shop for some of them. Who was William Pitt The Younger? Well, he became prime minister at the age of 24 – imagine that! And he was good at it too.

Some PMs were there for the best part of a decade like John Major but were thought of as continually failing the entire time. Some were immediately crushed by events beyond their control (Gordon Brown with the 2008 financial meltdown, Neville Chamberlain with Hitler). Some began as universally beloved and made a single disastrous decision and became universally detested (Tony Blair). Some were cosy and reassuring (Harold Macmillan) and some were screechy and turbulent (David Lloyd George). Some were modesty itelf and some were flat-out egomaniacs, such as the only novelist to have become prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli (“I am one of those to whom a moderate reputation can give no pleasure.”)

Most people I think will pick Churchill as the GOAT but I rather think William Gladstone was the GOAT :

Yes, it’s true he would encounter prostitutes in the London streets and take them back to Downing Street to convert them to Christianity and the respectable life, and yes it’s true that when he felt he was tempted by their voluptuous charms he flagellated himself on occasion, but let’s put that to one side. He set up employment exchanges for dock workers to stop the gross exploitation by the shipping companies; he organised the new railway network ensuring cheap fares for all and making the new technology of the telegraph run alongside the train tracks; he scrapped ancient laws which kept basic foodstuffs artificially expensive, and this turbocharged the whole economy; he campaigned to extend the vote to the working class; all of this was before he became PM; then, he provided free education for all children up to the age of 12; he abolished the sale of army commissions, replacing patronage with meritocracy; he introduced the secret ballot in all elections; he supported the London dock strike of 1889 when he was back in opposition (aged 77); he began a campaign for state funded old age pensions; he fought the 1892 election at age 83 and won (take that Joe Biden) and so had a 4th time as prime minister). He was an old man in a hurry.

Although it feels not a little uncomfortable to endorse a volume with a foreword written by Boris Johnson, I must say this is a lot of historical nerdy fun.


My unlikely hero