Is a charismatic leader also an effective one? What role do commentators and historians have in shaping politicians- personae? Making Reputations provides a major new assessment of the role of individuals in British politics.

List of Illustrations – vii Contributors – viii Introduction. Richard Toye and Julie Gottlieb – 1 Constructing Life Stories. Peter Marsh – 5 Gladstonian Liberalism and the rehabilitation of Robert Lowe, 1866-1868. Kristin Zimmerman – 15 ‘Squiff’, ‘Lliar George’, and ‘The McKennae’: The unpersuasive politics of personality in the Asquith coalition, 1915-16. Martin Farr – 29 Charismatic leadership, c. 1870-1914: A comparative European Perspective. Henk te Velde – 42 An exemplary communist life? Harry Pollitt’s Serving My Time in comparative perspective. Kevin Morgan – 56 A Mosleyite Life Stranger than Fiction: The Making and Remaking of Olive Hawks. Julie Gottlieb – 70 Winston Churchill and the ‘Men of Destiny’: Leadership and the role of the Prime Minister in wartime feature films. Jo Fox – 92 ‘Let us go forward together’: Clementine Churchill and the role of the personality in wartime Britain. Helen Jones – 109 The trials of a biography: Roy Harrod’s Life of John Maynard Keynes reconsidered. Richard Toye – 123 ‘Our Amazonian Colleague’: Edith Summerskill’s problematic reputation. Penny Summerfield – 135 Michael Foot as Labour leader: the uses of the past. Paul Corthorn – 151 ‘I don’t think of myself as the first woman Prime Minister’: Gender, Identity and Image in Margaret Thatcher’s Career. Anneke Ribberink – 166 New Labour and The Sun, 1994-97. Sam Gallagher – 180 Notes – 198 Index – 234

Is a charismatic leader also an effective one? What role do commentators and historians have in shaping politicians- personae? Making Reputations provides a major new assessment of the role of individuals in British politics.