Dole Queues and Demons: British Election Posters from the Conservative Party Archive (Paperback)

After studying at the University of St. Andrews, I was appointed to a lectureship in History at the University of Leicester in 1979, where I taught until retiring in 2016 with the honorary title of Emeritus Professor of Modern British History. I have been a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society since 1990, and am a member of the editorial committee and a Trustee of the academic journal ‘Parliamentary History’. In the New Year Honours List of 2018, I was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) ‘for services to political history’. I have always been interested in modern British political history, and within that I have concentrated on the Conservative Party during the twentieth century. Despite its long record of electoral success and dominance in government since 1918, when I began research in the late 1970s this was a very neglected area. My first book, ‘Baldwin and the Conservative Party: The Crisis of 1929-1931’ (Yale University Press, 1988), examined the internal party crisis of 1929-31, when rebellion within the party and attacks from the ‘Press Lords’ nearly forced Stanley Baldwin out of the leadership. My interest in the history of the Conservative Party led to further projects which dealt also with the period after 1945, particularly in the first of the three books which I have co-edited with Anthony Seldon: ‘Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900’ (Oxford University Press, 1994). We subsequently co-edited a book on ‘The Heath Government 1970-1974’ (Longman, 1996), and later a volume of essays by leading historians which examined each of the periods in which the Conservative Party has been in opposition since the days of Disraeli: ‘Recovering Power: The Conservatives in Opposition since 1867’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). My main area of interest remains the inter-war period, and this culminated in the major study ‘Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party in Britain 1918-1945’ (Oxford University Press, 2013). This examines the nature and working of every level of the Party from the leader to the grass-roots, and integrates this with Conservative ideas, attitudes and electoral support. The book was awarded the prize for Best Publication of 2013 by the Conservatives & Conservatism Group of the Political Studies Association. My other books include a short illustrated biography of Winston Churchill (British Library, 2003), and a book which contains full colour reproductions of nearly 200 Conservative posters from the Edwardian era to the 2010 general election: ‘Dole Queues and Demons: British Election Posters from the Conservative Party Archive’ (Bodleian Library, 2011). I have also written a number of articles for academic journals, and contributed the essay on Stanley Baldwin to the ‘Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’. I am also interested in the history of Parliament, and these two research areas came together in the two-volume edition of the private diary of Sir Cuthbert Headlam, who was a Conservative MP for most of the period from 1924 to 1951 and a junior minister in the late 1920s and early 1930s. I have also edited a volume of letters sent by Cabinet Ministers and other prominent figures to Lord Irwin (later the Earl of Halifax) during his term as Viceroy of India, to keep him informed about the political situation at home: ‘Conservative Politics in National and Imperial Crisis: Letters from Britain to the Viceroy of India, 1926-1931’ (Ashgate, 2014). Covering events from the General Strike of May 1926 to Irwin’s negotiation of a pact with Gandhi in March 1931, these private and previously unpublished letters mix analysis and gossip, and provide a unique inside account of the Baldwin government of 1924-29 and the troubles of the Conservative Party in opposition in 1929-31. My most recent project is an edited collection of articles for the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, focusing upon its effects and significance: ‘The Advent of Democracy: The Impact of the 1918 Reform Act on British Politics’ (Wiley, 2018). I am currently working on a number of articles exploring aspects of inter-war politics, and my major long-term project is a full-length biography of Stanley Baldwin, leader of the Conservative Party from 1923 to 1937 and three times Prime Minister during that period.