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Clement Attlee: The Man Who Made Modern Britain Illustrated Edition

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Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Winston Churchill's wartime heroics and larger-than-life personality propelled him to the center of the world stage. To most, he remains Great Britain's greatest Prime Minister, his fame and charisma overshadowing those who followed in his footsteps. Yet while he presided over his country's finest hour, he was not its most consequential leader. In this definitive new biography, John Bew reveals how that designation belongs to Clement Attlee, Churchill's successor, who launched a new era of political, economic, and social reform that would forever change Great Britain.

Bew's thorough and keen examination of Attlee, the former leader of the Labour Party, illuminates how his progressive beliefs shaped his influential domestic and international policy. Alternatively criticized for being "too socialist" or "not radical enough," Attlee's quiet tenacity was intrinsic to the success of his party and highly pertinent to British identity overall. In 1948, he established the National Health Service as part of his "British New Deal"-a comprehensive, universal system of insurance, welfare, and family allowances to be enjoyed by all British citizens. Attlee also initiated key advancements in international relations by supporting the development of both the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and by granting independence to India, Burma, and Ceylon. More controversially, he sanctioned the building of Britain's nuclear deterrent in response to the rise of the Soviet Union and the threat of atomic bombs.

Clement Attlee: The Man Who Made Modern Britain explores his tenure in the years after the war, as he presided over a radical new government in an age of austerity and imperial decline. Bew mines contemporary memoirs, diaries, and press excerpts to present readers with an illuminating and intimate look into Attlee's life and career. Attentive to both the man and the political landscape, this comprehensive biography provides new insight into the soul of a leader who transformed his country and by extension the vast empire over which it once ruled.

ISBN-10

0190203404
ISBN-13

978-0190203405
Edition

Illustrated
Publisher

Oxford University Press
Publication date

March 2, 2017
Language

English
Dimensions

9.4 x 2.2 x 6.6 inches
Print length

688 pages
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Editorial Reviews

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"I was not expecting to learn much new about the man ranked by our colleagues as the twentieth century's most successful prime minister (in a 2004 IPSOS-MORI poll of historians and political scientists). In this respect, I was, however, pleasantly surprised ... This is a compassionate biography that seeks to celebrate Attlee as a decent and humble man whose heart was in the right place and who was impressively adept at holding his party together after the electoral catastrophe of 1931 and in delivering on the promises of the 1945 election manifesto." -- Laura Beers, Journal of Modern History

"[A] superb biography..."--Ferdinand Mount, New York Review of Books

"Easily the best single-volume, cradle-to-grave life of Clement Attlee yet written. Professor Bew updates but also betters all the other biographies with this intelligent, well-researched and highly readable book. Scholarly and perceptive, it tells the story of how quiet determination and impeccable political timing wrought a peaceful revolution."--Andrew Roberts

"In this monumental biography, John Bew sets out to explore, not just the scale of the achievement, but to discover what made Attlee tick."--Chris Mullin, Guardian

"This biography makes a strong case for Attlee's greatness Such contradictions deserve a discerning biographer, and in John Bew, Attlee has the man he deserves. He has written with verve and confidence a first-rate life of a man whom he correctly argues has been under-appreciated...What a life and what a man."--Daniel Finkelstein, The Times

"Outstanding Bew's achievement is not only to bring this curious and introverted man to life, but to make him oddly loveable. He steps out like a character from the pages of the social novels of H. G. Wells or George Orwell."--Robert Harris, Sunday Times

"So how did a man who was the object of so much private derision by his peers come to preside over Labour's greatest (some might say only) radical government? Bew puts the question at the core of his story. He answers it convincingly by mixing arresting narrative with a thorough study of the people and policies of the Labour movement at a time of hardship interspersed by war and fierce ideological difference."--John Kampfner, Observer

"Magisterial. A great work of personal biography, social history, political philosophy, international relations and ferrets-in-a-sack Labour Party infighting As the Labour Party retreats towards ideological self-immolation, as Britain stumbles on the world stage, and as European social democracy stands in peril, we need another Attlee more than ever. In the absence of which, we have Bew's brilliant book."--Tristram Hunt, Prospect

"Bew delves into a richly complicated postwar British society and politics to show how this once-underestimated politician can lend valuable lessons to the new generation of Labour, crushed in the election defeat of 2015....The 'invisible man' gets his well-deserved due in this thorough new biography."--Kirkus Reviews

"Far and away the best biography of Attlee yet written."--Wall Street Journal

"A fascinating book."--Washington Free Beacon

"He writes with elegance and penetrating analytical force, skillfully rounding out Attlee both as a man and a quiet revolutionary."--The American Interest

About the Author

John Bew is Professor of History and Foreign Policy at the War Studies Department at King's College London. Previously, he was a Lecturer in Modern British History at Cambridge. In 2013, he was named to the Kissinger Chair at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. He is the author of five books, most recently Realpolitik: A History.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Illustrated edition (March 2, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 688 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0190203404
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0190203405
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.4 x 2.2 x 6.6 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,095,353 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #60 in U.K. Prime Minister Biographies
- #1,875 in Historical British Biographies
- #5,459 in Great Britain History (Books)

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John Bew

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John Bew is Professor of History and Foreign Policy at the War Studies Department of King's College London and has been described as the "leading British historian of generation". Having begun his career in Cambridge University, John was awarded the 2015 Philip Leverhulme Prize for International Studies and in 2013-4 became the youngest ever holder of the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. He is a contributing writer at the New Statesman and an experienced radio and television broadcaster. John is the author of five books including Castlereagh: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2011), which was a book of the year in The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, Sunday Telegraph, Total Politics, and BBC Parliament’s Booktalk. Other books include a co-written work, Talking to Terrorists: Making Peace in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country (Columbia University Press, 2009), which was named in Foreign Policy magazine’s Global Thinkers Book Club, and the critically-acclaimed Realpolitik: A History (Oxford University Press, 2015). His most recent book is Citizen Clem: A Life of Clement Attlee (Riverrun, 2016) which was a beststeller and book of the year in The Sunday Times, Times, Spectator and New Statesman and won the 2016 Parliamentary Book Award for Best Book by a Non-Parliamentarian. John was born in Belfast in 1980, educated at Cambridge, and lives in London.

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4.6 out of 5

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jojova

A Wonderful Book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 29, 2020

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a highly interesting read about a modest but giant of a man who worked ceaselessly to improve conditions for the British working class. A highly interesting man, not much discussed today, and what a mistake!
I especially enjoyed reading about Attlee’s interpretation of democratic socialism, which was that all citizens had both rights AND obligations, these days you hear a lot about citizens rights, but not much about their obligations. Attlee’ time as prime minister immediately following WWII, is especially interesting with the introduction of national health care and the difficulties with nationalizing certain industries and achieving full employment.
Also of note was how fast everything came apart when the Korean War required Britain to invest in the military and social services sacrifices had to be made.
Anyone interested in socialism should read this book. I feel better informed about the nuances and pitfalls of this type of government.

One person found this helpful

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Terrance Mullin

Attlee has things to teach us

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 17, 2020

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This is a thorough, detailed story of Attlee and the Labor party in the first part of the 20th century. While being an Anglophile for a long time,I knew nothing of Attlee. This biography brought me up to date both on him and on many of the Labor leaders who held office with him. It is fascinating to read about Attlee's thoughts on a proper government and compare them to contemporary political thought in the US. Attlee`s views on communist nations, such as China and Cuba and Yugoslavia, seem so much more advanced than comparable US thinking, stuck as it was with Sen. McCarthy and Chiang. Attlee remains an unknown political figure. Let's hope this book raises his profile.

One person found this helpful

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Delta D.

No hesitation in recommending this book. Very readable, on the whole, pretty fair, although perhaps a little long-winded.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 31, 2017

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Attlee's impact on the UK in the 20th century was immense and beneficial. Having secured an extraordinarily unlikely election victory over Churchill after the defeat of Germany in 1945, he introduced the welfare state and initiated the metamorphosis of the British Empire into the British Commonwealth. I doubt that it's possible for a biography to be completely objective. This biographer is clearly a big fan of Attlee and the book is something of a hymn to him. I share the same opinion, but my general preference is to read the opposing point of view. So my four stars, rather than five, for this is not so much a reflection of the quality of the biography as a sense of the author having been preaching to the choir. No hesitation in recommending this book. It's very readable, on the whole, pretty fair, although perhaps a little long-winded.

5 people found this helpful

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Liam J Walsh

A great biog of a great British PM

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 25, 2020

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I've been waiting for this narrative biography for some time. Attlee was (until now) one of Britain's under estimated and under appreciated Prime Ministers, purely because of his reticent personality, not because of his achievements. He should be studied to compare with the "made for TV" gyrations and bluster of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. The writing is clear and engaging (though sometimes a little repetitive), and you really see the depth and decency of the man.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 9, 2017

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The author John Bew proposes that Attlee was the emblematic Englishman of the 20th century. Bew makes a good case.

Anyone who is interested in a good trot through American history of the mid-20th c. will study Harry Truman. For Germany, it is Konrad Adenauer. For France, it is Charles de Gaulle. For Britain, one could do worse than studying the career of the wee Attlee.

The Labour administration of 1945-51 is confusing for Americans, not least because we remember Churchill's Vee-sign and then his humiliating defeat in '45. One has heard the names -- Bevan and Bevin, Cripps, Dalton and Morrison -- but Bew brings them into focus as active politicians, jostling one another in the quest for power, even as the British Empire was sinking into the westward sun.

Furthermore, Bew is a pleasure to read. Immensely enjoyable.

9 people found this helpful

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History nut

A moving life of a great and vastly underappreciated, underestimated leader

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 9, 2018

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It's easy to admire Churchill, especially if you know little and are seduced by the bugle and saddles version of history. Once past the broad brush strokes you see WSC's defects. With Attlee its the reverse. A great and worth man, leading a life as deeply significant of his times as Winston's, but without the vainglory of the blowhard. The Brits of the war years and after had the lions heart, Churchill supplied the roar. Attlee provided the character, the intelligence, and the vision. His story needs to be better known and this is the best version of it available.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 12, 2018

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Anyone interested in how the British social welfare system came to fruition will learn from the book the principal players and the forces of conflict that shaped the nation and political parties that created it. The reader will see comparisons with the New Deal in America and the debates over civic responsibility that divide America today. Sober picture of Churchill and how Attlee managed his tail winds.

3 people found this helpful

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Dr. Jack Kushner

Clement Attlee

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 14, 2017

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I felt some attachment to Attlee as I was a student at Sheffield in 1959 and engaged political discussions with British students. Frequently the name of Attlee would come up. This is an excellent book that I enjoyed and recommend. Jack Kushner

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DAVID BRYSON

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 26, 2018

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Someone said of Attlee that he never used one word when none would do. At that rate we should be the more grateful to Professor Bew that he has found the time and energy to produce near-on six hundred pages of text devoted to such a laconic statesman. Attlee was a real epoch-maker in the full sense of that term, so if he, or subsequent historians or both, have left us short of adequate analysis to categorise and evaluate such an important era, that alone makes this book important. In fact Attlee was not as tongue-tied as they used to tell us. He kept up a steady correspondence with his brother that is notable for its candour, and apart from his articulacy he composed some semi-satirical poetry that provides its own sidelights.

For once the very length of the book is a virtue in itself, but its real value comes more from its quality than its volume. Attlee’s early upbringing was of a standard right-wing kind, imperialist and conformist. His conversion to socialism was not sudden or impulsive, but grew on him from his exposure to the social conditions endured by the people of the east end of London, it went deep and it stayed with him. It wasn’t anything to do with Christianity, it seems, and that left him early, never to return to him. His reading naturally influenced his thinking, but it was Morris and not Marx who was the influence. It was all a matter of an Englishman’s sense of duty and sense of fairness, and he embodied the overworked cliché that the new order had to be established through practical action and not through intellectual theory. For all that, he had a straightforward and coherent vision of socialism in Britain. In practice this would involve compromise, whatever the radicals thought or said, but in the end he established the welfare state in the country he loved but he remained an unswerving patriot to the end. That would have been no mean achievement for any radicals or intellectuals. What kind of socialist achievement have they got to show? One could look at the Soviet Union, presumably, but then the right kind of British socialist will look away. For socialism in practice look to Clem Attlee.

As for Attlee’s impact on the world scene, it was the grant of independence to India, Pakistan, Malaya and Singapore that he may have seen as his own main achievement. He saw with rueful clarity how the British Empire was now betraying its own ideals, and he acted, with clear-headed decisiveness, to bring the era of empire to its end, now overdue.

All that is depicted by Bew with a simple clarity that I find worthy of its subject. This narrator has got the hang of this rather shy and awkward personality, I feel. As well as filling in historical blanks, Bew is determined to rehabilitate his subject. He does that without exaggeration or hagiography, and it is the sense of fairness from both of them that makes this long volume a surprisingly easy read. Where Bew is most critical is where I suppose we might expect that, namely in the closing period of WWII and the years immediately thereafter. It’s probably fair to conclude that Attlee and his government were out of their depth with the issue of Palestine. It may even be, as Bew suggests, that the enormity of the Holocaust had not really sunk into their understanding of its impact on Jewish opinion, particularly in America. Again, the tottering post-war economy suffered an early blow when Truman cancelled lend-lease. I have heard Attlee say in an interview that this time it was probably the POTUS who didn’t understand the issue but thought it a routine matter. The government ploughed on, but at the price of having to take on an expensive American loan over and above the continuing American demand for Britain to keep up its high outlay on its armed forces to keep the Russians at bay, apparently.

Bills, bills, austerity, austerity. Rationing seemed likely to go on for ever, (Cripps, now Chancellor, used to talk about ‘coupongs’ which somehow made the rationing seem worse). In particular the winter of 1947 was particularly severe, and I see that Bew is inclined to think that Manny Shinwell, the over-boastful Minister of Fuel and Power, ought to have been sacked over the power cuts. I can’t now remember what my own parents thought about that, but it seems from Bew’s narrative that the public in general were disposed to cut the government in general some slack for a while at least. Interestingly, Bew is of the opinion that it was Attlee’s actual shyness and taciturnity that made him acceptable to his very British electorate. Dull he might have seemed, but lazy he was not, his integrity was total, and he was perceived as being thoughtful and intelligent without being the kind of patronising know-all that intellectual socialists were prone to being. There was a merry-go-round of the intellectuals in government, and Bew recounts the comings and goings of Dalton, Cripps et al with a straight face. Clem’s nearest to a real friend was Ernie Bevin, and I was interested to read that Attlee might have preferred Aneurin Bevan as his own successor, except that Bevan had opened his mouth once or twice too often.

It’s a crowded canvas of people and events, altogether. This is not the place for my own views on the subject of nuclear arms, except perhaps to say that Ernie Bevin was incensed at being shut out of the American project by Secretary Byrnes, while at the same time Attlee was clandestinely developing the bomb. At the same time Clem was firm in his determination to use chemical weapons if he had to. Where that matter stands now, red lines and all, I don’t know, but you would not get that idea past Attlee these days, so there is some little progress somewhere, I hope.

2 people found this helpful

Jantan

A long-awaited re-appraisal of a truly great political figure

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 20, 2020

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This is a clear account of an unusual man - physically very brave but also extremely shy, a man entirely without conceit. He fought in WW1 and was injured, worked amongst the poor in the East End of London and dedicated his life to improving the lot of working people. It is refreshing in these difficult times, when there seem to be no political giants, to read of a politician who, without being vain or personally ambitious, transformed a war-weary country socially and economically and began the break-up of the British Empire.
I have one caveat. There is a serious error of fact (one presumes it was made by a research assistant who was not checked) which brought me up with a start and caused me to read on with less confidence in Mr Bew than I had had before.

billybob

Great service as advertised arrived on time

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 21, 2021

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Nothing it was great service

Marian Healy

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 6, 2018

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Extremely well written and an engrossing read

One person found this helpful

Sue C

WONDERFUL biogragraphy of quiet,modest but brilliant British politician

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 25, 2022

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Atlee was overshadowed by the brilliant, linguistically enthralling,Churchill who to many, saw Britain through the war. I suspect, like many of my generation (born during the war) I had NO idea of Attlee's role in Britain; only that that my parents were shocked by 'ungrateful Britain' when Churchill lost the first post-war election.
Written by an academic historian but eminently readable. The publisher has produced a good book of substantial length, with photographs and footnotes. My only criticism is that it's very heavy and difficult to read in bed.

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