Military leader in Downing Street: John Grigg's multi-volume biography of Lloyd George represents robust, argumentative history-writing at its best, says Andrew Roberts.

(From The Sunday Telegraph (United Kingdom))

Byline: Andrew Roberts

Lloyd George:

War Leader

by John Grigg

Allen Lane/The Penguin Press, pounds 25, 669 pp

pounds 23 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222

JOHN GRIGG, who died earlier this year, was one of Britain's foremost historians, and in his four-volume life of Lloyd George he has left a formidable monument to his scholarship. This volume takes the Prime Minister from his entry to Number 10 in December 1916 to the armistice on November 11, 1918. It therefore covers less than two years, but what full and furious years they were as Lloyd George grasps control of a military machine that seemed to be going nowhere after the massive blood-letting of the Somme Offensive, and propels it towards victory.

One …