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A Welshman described as ‘one of our greatest Prime Ministers’ and who is credited with winning the First World War has no souvenir items for sale marking his contribution in the Imperial War Museum (IWM) while there are a huge number of products celebrating Winston Churchill.
Lloyd George was voted the third greatest British prime minister of the 20th century in a poll of 139 academics organised by MORI, and in 2002 he was named among the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote.
He became the First Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor and is so far the only British Prime Minister to have been Welsh, and to have spoken English as a second language.
“We would be interested also to know why the Imperial War Museum does not seem to wish to stock any comparative material on Lloyd George, when they already do so on Winston Churchill”
Lloyd George remains a controversial figure.
This scandal, which would have destroyed his career if the whole truth had come out at the time, was a precursor to the whiff of corruption (for example the sale of honours in 1922) that later surrounded Lloyd George’s premiership, although his supporters say in this he was only doing what others had done for generations but was caught out.
and he particularly attacked Grey in his memoirs.
Yet his role in history is unquestioned making the IWM decision not to stock anything about him even more remarkable.
Historian Martin Pugh in The Oxford Companion to British History argues that: “He (Lloyd George) made a greater impact on British public life than any other 20th-century leader, thanks to his pre-war introduction of Britain’s social welfare system (especially medical insurance, unemployment insurance, and old-age pensions, largely paid for by taxes on high incomes and on the land).
“Furthermore, in foreign affairs he played a leading role in winning the First World War, redrawing the map of Europe at the peace conference, and partitioning Ireland.”
Surely facts like these render it absurd there is nothing to mark his contribution in a major museum.
