Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister

2017 | Biography

Elected in a surprise landslide in 1945, Clement Attlee was the first ever Labour leader to command a majority government. At the helm for twenty years, he remains the longest-serving leader in the history of the Labour Party. When he was voted out in 1951, he left with Labour's highest share of the vote before or since. A retiring man, overshadowed by the flamboyant Churchill during the Second World War, he is dimly remembered as a politician who, by good fortune, happened to lead the Labour Party at a time when Britain was disillusioned with Tory rule and ready for change. Michael Jago argues that nothing could be further from the truth. Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister traces the life of a middle-class lawyer's son who, appalled by living conditions in London's East End, relentlessly pursued his ambition to lead a government that would implement far-reaching socialist reform and change forever the divisive class structure of twentieth-century Britain.

Michael Jago (Author)