2025 PROGRAM
Rivals in the Storm: War, Peace and the Price of Leadership
DATE:
Saturday 29th March
LOCATION:
Darley Smith Building
COST:
$22
Elected to the House of Commons in 1890 as a 27-year-old, David Lloyd George was audacious, charming, witty, energetic and a good debater. A Welshman who grew up in poverty, he was from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ compared with parliamentarians of the day and demonstrated a profound empathy for those for whom class denied opportunities. On the one hand, history has judged him as an early appeaser of Germany before World War I and a Prime Minister (1916-1922) who made several unforced strategic errors. On the other hand, he is seen as the Prime Minister who won the Great War and as having an intuitive reading of geopolitical issues. He saw the need – at least in the short term - for ’a special relationship’ with the United States; he foreshadowed another world war after the many compromises implicit in the Treaty of Versailles even though he was one of its architects; and closer to home led negotiations that culminated in an independent Ireland.
We talk with former Conservative MP Damian Collins, the author of Rivals in the Storm: How David Lloyd George Won the War and Lost his Government.
Host: Geraldine Doogue
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY
The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.