Liberal prime minister who led Britain in the later war and argued for moderation towards Germany at the peace conference
Born in Manchester to Welsh parents, he made his name as a radical Liberal orator. As chancellor of the exchequer he introduced the 1909 People’s Budget and the National Insurance Act, laying foundations of the welfare state. After serving as minister of munitions and secretary for war he became prime minister in December 1916. At the Paris Peace Conference he opposed reparations that would wreck the German economy and sought to check French dominance. In 1921 he concluded the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement and negotiated the creation of the Irish Free State, but resigned in 1922 when the Conservatives left the coalition. In 1936 he met Hitler and praised him. He died in 1945.
Career timeline
- 1890MP for Caernarvon Boroughs
- 1908–1915Chancellor of the Exchequer
- 1915–1916Minister of Munitions
- 1916Secretary of State for War
- 1916–1922Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- 1919British representative at the Paris Peace Conference
British economist who left the Treasury in protest at the peace treaty and warned of the damage reparations would do
Born in Cambridge, he studied mathematics at King’s College. Entering the Treasury in 1915, he designed the terms of credit between Britain and its continental allies. At the Paris Peace Conference he tried to keep Germany’s reparations within its capacity to pay but was largely excluded from the high-level talks, and the treaty’s outcome led to his resignation from the Treasury. The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), predicting the treaty’s damaging effects, made him internationally famous. In the Depression he argued that aggregate demand determined the level of economic activity and called for fiscal and monetary policy against slumps, publishing The General Theory in 1936. He led the British delegation at Bretton Woods in 1944, where the American plan largely prevailed. He died of heart attacks in 1946.
Career timeline
- 1915–1919Treasury official
- 1919Treasury representative at the Paris Peace Conference; resigned
- 1919The Economic Consequences of the Peace
- 1936The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
- 1944Head of the British delegation at Bretton Woods
The historian who made the Spanish Civil War a global narrative
Thomas began The Spanish Civil War without knowing a word of Spanish, and the book was banned by the Franco regime and smuggled into Spain as a clandestine best-seller.
Hugh Thomas was an English historian whose 1961 The Spanish Civil War made a large, readable survey of the conflict available to an international audience. Drawing on printed diplomatic sources, participant accounts and interviews, he presented the Republican struggle and its internal violence without simply adopting either Communist or anti-Communist polemic. The book became a clandestine bestseller in Francoist Spain, was repeatedly revised, and remained a foundational point of reference despite factual and interpretive criticisms. His later work ranged across Cuba, the Spanish empire and world history, while his political career moved from Labour to the Conservatives and then the Liberal Democrats.
Career timeline
- 1931–1952Born at Windsor; educated at Sherborne School and Cambridge, studying history
- 1952–1953First-class History Tripos result; president of the Cambridge Union Society
- 1954–1957Served in the British Foreign Office, including the UK delegation to the UN Disarmament Commission and the Paris embassy
- 1957Lectured at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and published his first novel, The World's Game
- 1961Published The Spanish Civil War; won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1962
- 1966–1976Professor of History at the University of Reading
- 1971–2014Published major works on Cuba, the conquest of Mexico, the Spanish empire and world history
- 1981–2017Created Baron Thomas of Swynnerton and sat in the House of Lords; died in 2017
British historian who coined 'refolution' to define the peaceful revolutions of 1989
Meeting Václav Havel in a Prague basement pub on 23 November 1989, he offered this prediction: 'In Poland it took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks: perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take ten days!'
British historian, Oxford professor of European studies, and Guardian columnist who has chronicled the contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe and the collapse of communist regimes. As an eyewitness to the revolutions of 1989 in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague, he recorded the unfolding of civil resistance in The Magic Lantern (1990) and coined the term 'refolution', a fusion of reform and revolution, to characterize the peaceful, negotiated nature of these systemic transitions. Called a 'historian of the present' by George Kennan, he has spent four decades writing on European freedom and democracy; his 2017 Charlemagne Prize and other international honours reflect work that has shaped both scholarly debate and policymaking.
Career timeline
- 1980First Western journalist to report from the Gdańsk Lenin Shipyard strike; met Lech Wałęsa
- 1986–1987Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
- 1989Witnessed the 1989 revolutions in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague; wrote The Magic Lantern (1990)
- 2000–Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
- 2004–Professor of European Studies, Oxford; Guardian international affairs columnist
- 2017Awarded the Charlemagne Prize for services to European unity
