Professor Sir David Cannadine explores political fame and image by looking at how an object or prop can come to define a political leader. In this episode - Lloyd George, the Welsh Wizard.

When David Lloyd George died in 1945, Winston Churchill did not stint in his praise, calling him, ‘the greatest Welshman which that unconquerable race has produced since the age of the Tudors'. But as is often the way with eulogies, it was far from being the whole truth. While Lloyd George steered Britain though the First World War, his later political record was often controversial. Lloyd George came of age during the Welsh national reawakening, so it was only a matter of time before the ‘Man Who Had Won the War’ was hailed as ‘Welsh Wizard’. But by 1922, when Lloyd George had lost his magic touch, he seemed not so much a winning wizard as a corrupt trickster, and the ‘wizard’ associations were turned against him.

David visits Lloyd George’s family home in Llanystumdwy, North Wales and he speaks to historian Mike Benbough-Jackson about how Lloyd George expressed his Welshness, and deliberately cultivated his ‘wizardly’ persona.

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald
Series Researcher: Martin Spychal
Readings by Will Huggins

A Zinc Audio production for BBC Radio 4 Show less