By 1914 the Liberal Party had been governing Britain ever since its stunning general election victory of 1906. Four years later the Party was out of office, and so enfeebled it would never again form a government. What prompted the Liberal decline in the years of The Great War, and why did this decline then accelerate? Trevor Wilson's classic study analyses the strains exerted on Liberal principles by war, and the leadership crisis induced in 1916 by Lloyd George's ousting of Asquith.

'A good political mystery, and Mr Wilson has told it in fine dramatic style.' A.J.P. Taylor

'Offers portraits of those rivals, Asquith and Lloyd George, that are among the best - the most plausible and the most temperate - available.' New Yorker