Harold Wilson is the only post-war leader of any party to serve as Britain's Prime Minister on two separate occasions. In total he won four General Elections, spending nearly eight years in Downing Street. Half a century later, he is still unbeaten, Labour's greatest ever election winner. How did he do it - and at what cost? Critics then and now have painted him as an opportunistic political calculator, even as a Soviet secret agent. In this powerful new portrait, drawing on previously unavailable sources and first-hand parliamentary insight, acclaimed biographer Nick Thomas-Symonds reveals a more complex figure. Wilson was a new kind of politician but, in his own way, this media-savvy harbinger of modernity was also a deeply traditional man, whose actions often suggest nothing less than a spiritual mission. In an intriguing paradox, Wilson, influenced by the distinctively democratic faith of his Yorkshire boyhood, united a fractured Labour Party, ushering in the cultural and social changes of the 'swinging sixties'. His was the government to decriminalise homosexuality, legalise abortion and abolish capital punishment. With a brilliant mind, sure-footed political moves and a feel for public opinion, he was a survivor who over and over again emerged from desperate crises - even, perhaps, conspiracies - to lead his party to victory. It is time at last to learn his secrets.

A biography of a key figure in British political life, now with a new foreword by Keir Starmer, providing a vivid portrait of the man and his politics. Clement Attlee - the man who created the welfare state and decolonised vast swathes of the British Empire, including India - has been acclaimed by many as Britain's greatest twentieth-century Prime Minister. Yet somehow Attlee the man remains elusive. How did such a moderate, modest man bring about so many enduring changes? What are the secrets of his leadership style? And how do his personal attributes account for both his spectacular successes and his apparent failures? When Attlee became Prime Minister in July 1945 he was the leader of a Labour party that had won a landslide victory. With almost 50 percent of the popular vote, Attlee seemed to have achieved the platform for Labour to dominate post-war British politics. Yet just 6 years and 3 months after the 1945 victory, and despite all Attlee's governments had appeared to achieve, Labour was out of office, condemned to opposition for a further 13 years. This presents one of the great paradoxes of twentieth-century British history: how Attlee's government achieved so much, but lost power so quickly. But perhaps the greatest paradox was Attlee himself. Attlee's obituary in "The Times" in 1967 stated that 'much of what he did was memorable; very little that he said'. This new biography, based on extensive research into Attlee's papers and first-hand interviews, examines the myths that have arisen around this key figure of British political life, providing a vivid portrait of this man and his politics.