The Cancelled Prime Minister

Description

Ramsay MacDonald was born an illegitimate child in north-east Scotland. Leaving school at fourteen, he seemed bound to follow in his ploughman father’s footsteps. Instead, he would become the UK’s first Labour Prime Minister—a friend of George V and a global political star. How did he get there from his Highland bothy? Why has he been erased from political memory? And how did this leftist parliamentarian end up leading a Conservative-dominated National Government?

MacDonald’s was an elusive, Celtic personality, easier to criticise than to understand. Historian Walter Reid demystifies this fascinating politician, dismissing the common charge of treacherous ambition and tracing MacDonald’s personal odyssey—including half a life grieving his wife Margaret, a remarkable feminist and social reformer lost young to blood poisoning.

History has been unkind to MacDonald, and most often written with politically hostile pens. Drawing extensively on his private diaries, this biography restores a towering figure to his rightful historical place, and reveals his full complexity—a man not without faults, but able and honourable, with deep and widespread interests.

Reviews

‘With his fresh study of that most denounced of Prime Ministers, Ramsay Macdonald, Walter Reid adds another interesting biography to stand alongside his books on Neville Chamberlain, and Winston Churchill’s involvement with India.’ — John Hussey, award-winning author of Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815

‘Walter Reid opens a window on a giant of his time. Reid portrays a man driven by principle. Party politics were a secondary consideration when the rebasing of the economy demanded a scale of change unacceptable to the Labour Party which he had helped to establish. This beautifully written book puts Ramsay McDonald in his rightful place in the political history of the UK.’ — Robert Lyman, author of Korea: War Without End

Author(s)

Walter Reid is an historian educated at the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and the author of several acclaimed books on British politics and history, including Fighting Retreat: Churchill and India (also published by Hurst). He raises sheep and cattle in Scotland and grows olives in France.