What’s on : Lectures

The pain and the privilege: the women in Lloyd George’s life

Lectures
Date
26 Oct 2012
Start time
7:30 PM
Venue
Tempest Anderson Hall
Speaker
Ffion Hague
The pain and the privilege: the women in Lloyd George's life

Event Information

Joint lecture with King’s Manor Senior Common Room, University of York

The pain and the privilege: the women in Lloyd George’s life
Ffion Hague, writer and broadcaster

Ffion Hague is probably best known as the wife of Foreign Secretary, William Hague, but she is an accomplished author in her own right and her talk will centre on her book The Pain and the Privilege, published in 2008, about the various women who featured in the life of David Lloyd-George.  The book gave rise to the BAFTA-Wales award winning documentary The Two Wives of Lloyd George first broadcast in 2009.

As well as running her own practice based on board evaluation in the UK corporate sector Ffion Hague is also a board member of the Outward Bound Trust and English National Opera.  In 2010 she was elected an Honorary Fellow of Manchester College, Oxford.

If you would like to order Ffion Hague’s book from Amazon using the YPS link, please click on the link below :

 

Click here to download a poster for this event

Report by Ken Hutson

From the humorous perspective of an MP’s wife, Ffion Hague gave us a glimpse of David Lloyd George’s political career and of the women in his life.
He rose from humble beginnings to become the longest serving Chancellor and one of the most successful British prime ministers. Renowned for his sense of humour and thundering oratory, he led the WW1 coalition (he was known as ‘the man that won the war’) and sought solutions to the Irish Question. He also supported women’s suffrage.
His relationships with women were convoluted. Spoilt by his mother, it is said that he had never tied his own shoelaces. His wife, Margaret Owen, tolerated both the womanising and the mistress Frances Stephenson (they were unknown to the public, and unreported by the press). Renowned herself for her charity fund-raising, she is recognised as one of the most successful wives of any British prime minister.
For all his faults, Lloyd George was very straight with his women, but not all women liked him.  Clementine Churchill had a particular antipathy for him, famously stating ‘he is the direct descendent of Judas Iscariot’.