MY FATHER, LLOYD GEORGE (248 pp.)—Richard Lloyd George—Crown—($4).
Lloyd George, knew my father
Father knew Lloyd George
Lloyd George knew my father
Father knew Lloyd George
This haunting political anthem, whose lyrics are meant to be repeated interminably to the tune of Onward, Christian Soldiers, is a tribute to the blazing fame of Britain's World War I Prime Minister. To the public and the London press, he was "The Man Who Won the War," "The Welsh Wizard" and "The Prime Minister of Europe." In the hymn-singing valleys of his homeland, his prestige was greater than that of the Prince of Wales (whom he taught Welsh), and no one could aspire to electoral office without the blessing of David Lloyd George. Hence the song, devised as a political parody by a new generation of Labor militants to ridicule those riding his coattails.
Few Americans under their middle 50s can have any direct memory of Lloyd George in his heyday; curiosity about his character and career are minimal. Nevertheless, from the most unlikely source, Lloyd George has been accorded a highly engaging biography. Richard Lloyd George, Earl of Dwyfor, 72, has succeeded in a most difficult biographical enterprise —to write of a famous father without being a bore, a dupe of his fame or indulging in Oedipal iconoclasm. Part memoir, part history and part character study, the book is written with a_ wry acceptance of the comedy inherent in all consanguinity. Clearly, Richard Lloyd George was that rare wise child who knows his own father. F.D.R. and Churchill will be lucky indeed if they are as well served from within their families.
A Pasha in Surrey. Yet the book makes clear that Lloyd George, besides being a great man, also lived up to the English legend—that the Welsh are lechers and Bible bashers, musicians and bards, and, from Henry Tudor to Aneurin Bevan, have had a capacity for stirring up trouble. Lloyd George was a humbug ("a Bible-thumping pagan," is his son's phrase), something very close to a crook (the question of a political fund, most of which may have stuck in his own pocket, was never cleared up), and a sedulous seducer on a scale "unprecedented" in the history of British statesmanship.
When Lloyd George's career faded in the '20s, it was not just that history had passed him by in the mass move of the discontented vote from liberal radicalism to trade union socialism: Lloyd George was too busy being a pasha to be a pundit or a prophet. Fame, money, wit, his bounderish bounce and white-maned, apple-cheeked handsomeness proved catnip to women, and he maintained what his son calls a "modern seraglio" at Churt, his princely estate in Surrey. On one of his increasingly rare visits to the old man's home Richard answered the phone; the caller' wanted to speak to the mistress of the house. "Which one?" asked Richard.