20th century Britain is in many senses uncharted territory for historians, territory by and large left to sociologists and political theorists. In a series of essays on our political leaders from Gladstone and Salisbury through Lloyd George, Churchill and Attlee to Thatcher, this book looks at the questions of how individual leaders have shaped the history of our country, interacting with the social and economic forces beloved of sociologists, tackling the questions of the importance of political leadership and the extent to which history determined by socio-economic trends and the decisions of individuals?