A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE announcement that the official life of Mr. Lloyd George —or, to be strictly accurate, Earl Lloyd George—is to be written by "Mr. Malcolm Thompson, for many years on the staff of the Liberal Party Organisation," will be received with considerable surprise. Who the ideal biographer would be is a hard question. To begin with, he should understand the Welsh side, and the decisive Welsh background, of L.G. He should be old enough to remember the young M.P.'s swift rise at Westminster—to remember at any rate the " pro-Boer " of the turn of the century and the anti-Education Bill campaigner of a day or two later. He should have sat in the House of Commons with L.G. He must have a sympathetic understand- ing of the social zeal that led to the beginnings of Health and Un- employment Insurance. He must be capable of comprehending with large vision the Prime Minister of the war and of the Peace Conference, and through all that and every other political vicissitude he must be firmly and fearlessly critical. All one can ask in such circumstances is who there is who is least incapable of such a task. The name that most naturally occurs is Dr. Thomas Jones, whom L.G. brought up from Wales during the last war to work with him in Downing Street, and who has lately resigned the secretaryship of the Pilgrim Trust. Dr. Jones is, I believe, writing something on L.G. for publication in the United States—but without access to the public and private papers in the Dowager Countess Lloyd George's possession. For it is the Dowager Countess (formerly Miss Frances Stevenson, L.G.'s secretary) who controls the situation as regards material for the biography. L.G.'s own published War Memoirs and The Truth About the Peace Treaty are voluminous, but they are, of course, far from forming a basis in themselves for a critical assessment. Sons have often written admirable lives of their fathers, and without any prejudice to a larger and different publication, I should very much like to see a broad, moderate-length book on L.G. by Lady Megan Lloyd-George.
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