Double standards of a Welsh Wizard
DAN SNOW ON LLOYD GEORGE BBC One, Wednesday, 9pm
HISTORIAN Dan Snow admits to having conflicting emotions about his great-great-grandfather David Lloyd George in this new documentary to mark the centenary of him becoming the first – and so far only – Welsh prime minister.
At the end of World War I, the North Wales solicitor who had become Prime Minister in 1916 was hailed as “the man who won the war”.
But he lived a double life, conducting a string of affairs while his wife Margaret stayed in Wales.
“He was a notorious womaniser,” says Dan, “whose long-running relationship with his young secretary meant that he almost had two wives.”
Having spent many childhood holidays in Criccieth, Dan returns to North Wales before retracing Lloyd George’s footsteps to Westminster and Versailles, where the premier represented Great Britain at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference – the peak of a remarkable political career.
The MP for ‘Carnarvon Boroughs’, Lloyd George was a brilliant public speaker who connected with ordinary people. Despite initially being anti-war and from nonconformist, chapelgoing Wales, he succeeded in galvanising an unprepared nation into a dynamic war machine.
However, even at the height of his popularity, the Welshman was seen by many establishment figures as an outsider and a threat, and his involvement in major financial scandals would today have ended his career.