In the summer of 1911 David Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, hired a young schoolteacher called Frances Stevenson to tutor his daughter in the summer holidays. He was forty-eight, and married with four children. She was twenty-two and had recently graduated with a degree in classics. She was highly intelligent as well as very attractive, and Lloyd George soon began to employ her as his secretary. At the beginning of 1913 they became lovers, on terms spelt out by Lloyd George with ruthless clarity- he would not leave his wife for her, nor would he risk his career. She was to become his private secretary, run his office and share his life as fully as his family and the need to avoid a scandal would allow. Their secret relationship was to last for thirty years until his wife s death finally allowed Lloyd George to marry her in 1943, less than two years before his own death. John Campbell s compelling new book is the first detailed study of this extraordinary relationship one that was known about by everyone in politics but never revealed in the press and of the strains that it placed on both parties. Frances longed to come out of the shadows and, even more, to hav

Author Biography

John Campbell's books include Lloyd George- The Goat in the Wilderness, Edward Heath (for which he was awarded the NCR Award) and an acclaimed two-volume biography of Margaret Thatcher.