Product Description

Bonar Law is one of the lesser known 20th-century British Prime Ministers. This work shows how he became leader of the Conservative Party in 1911, and how he reunited and reorganized it over the next 12 years. It also examines his life as a passionate husband, indulgent father and generous friend.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #264837 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 458 pages

Customer Reviews

An outstanding work of scholarship & fine biography.
Prof. R.J.Q. Adams has produced only the second biography (and first in 40 years) of the shortest serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century. Despite the brevity of his stay in Downing Street (he was already terminally ill with throat cancer when he took office) Bonar Law was one of the most important British political figures in the decade of the 1910s. Bonar Law succeeded former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour as the Tory leader in 1911 and remained in that position for the following turbulent decade. After Asquith and Lloyd George, Bonar Law was probably the most significant political figure of the era.

Despite his prosaic personality, Bonar Law inspired tremendous loyalty particularly from the mercurial Lord Beaverbrook who shared a similar background with the only British Prime Minister to be born in Canada. Adams has done an admirable job putting together the thin amount of material available about Bonar Law's private life to reveal a deeply dedicated family man who preferred the joys of domesticity to the pretensions of the establishment. Indeed, Bonar Law felt sincerely sorry for any of his friends who aspired to a peerage or indeed any other form of honour.

The most controversial part of this book is certain to be Prof. Adams' interpretation of Bonar Law's part in the debate surrounding the Third Irish Home Rule Bill. Historians have long attacked Bonar Law's apparent condonement of unconstitutional (i.e. violent)methods to oppose coercing Ulster into accepting Home Rule. While not approving such ideas personally Adams does make the case for how Bonar Law viewed the situation which was that it was the Liberal Government which was behaving in an unconstitutional manner by attempting to force through Home Rule before following up the Parliament Act of 1911 with a promised subsequent Parliament Act that would have democratized the Lords and justified restoring much of its power over the legislative process.

Bonar Law's part in the coalition government forged in the heat of the First World War was destined to be overshadowed by the dynamic Lloyd George even if the Tory leader had not been unassuming by nature. Nevertheless, the Welsh Wizard recognized the degree to which he owed his position to the continued support of this quiet son of the Manx. The result was one of the stranger partnerships in British political history but also one of the most seminal. Although his name is largely unknown to the general public today, Bonar Law's legacy is surprisingly germane to the present.

Fantastic read
I set about researching Andrew Bonar Law about 6 months ago, he's my great-great-great grandfather.

This book was just the right title i was looking for, i've learned a lot about the man, and have noticed some of his habits have been reflected in certain family members. Well researched and incredibly by-partizan.