Winston and the Welsh Wizard

In his obituary tribute in the House of Commons in March 1945 Winston Churchill called David Lloyd George, with a typical historical flourish, “the greatest Welshman which that unconquerable race has produced since the age of the Tudors.” “When the English history of the first quarter of the twentieth century is written,” he concluded more specifically, “it will be seen that the greater part of our fortunes in peace and in war were shaped by this one man.”¹

Today, of course, Churchill himself is consistently named both by historians and by the public as the “greatest Englishman” or the “greatest Briton.” But for years the two men who led the country to victory in the two global wars of the twentieth century were seen as equals. It used to be a favourite game of historians to debate which was the greater, however that might be defined. Today, though, Churchill’s reputation completely dwarfs that of his Welsh predecessor. This is largely because the Second World War is still endlessly celebrated in popular memory as Britain’s “Finest Hour,” and Churchill as the superhero who saved the world from Nazism, whereas 1914–18 has been written off as a futile and pointless bloodbath—as though it was not as necessary to resist German domination of Europe in 1914 as in 1939. In 1945 the cartoonist David Low drew Lloyd George and Pitt the Younger helping Churchill up beside them onto a plinth inscribed “Britain’s Greatest War Prime Minister.” But Lloyd George’s laurels have faded, leaving Churchill’s supremacy uncontested.

“The greatest Welshman which that unconquerable race has produced since the age of the