H. H. Asquith: Last of the Romans chronicles the life of H. H. Asquith (1852-1928), the longest-serving British prime minister between Lord Liverpool and Margaret Thatcher. In this study, V. Markham Lester argues that the key to understanding Asquith is to recognize the classical virtues he acquired early in his education. Employing unpublished sources and documents made public since the last full-scale biography of Asquith was published more than forty years ago, Lester challenges many interpretations in earlier biographies. Previous studies of Asquith have often glossed over his education and early years, contending that his development did not contribute materially to his mature outlook. On the contrary, by examining thoroughly Asquith's early career-particularly his tenure as home secretary and his time as a barrister-this book offers unappreciated insights into Asquith's character and development as a political leader. Lester further challenges the previous conclusions that Asquith failed as a war leader, demonstrating that Asquith succeeded in meeting the novel challenges of World War I and that his accomplishments have been insufficiently understood. He explains how Asquith's lifelong reliance on rational thought, eloquence, and self-control produced the impressive leadership required to hold the fragile government together as it struggled to handle the unexpected and unprecedented challenges of world war and to lay the foundation for ultimate victory in the Great War.

Victorian Insolvency explores for the first time the financial, legal, and administrative aspects of insolvency in nineteenth-century England. V. Markham Lester gives a detailed statistical analysis covering bankruptcy, imprisonment for debt, and company winding-up during the period, and traces the decline in the level of insolvency towards the end of the century. His thorough scholarship demonstrates just how significant a problem insolvency was for English society in the Victorian era. Dr Lester argues persuasively that random factors may have played as great a role as cyclical fluctuations in bankruptcy levels. Victorian Insolvency also traces the history of insolvency legislation and adds a new and important dimension to the debate on government growth by examining how the English legal system, through its administration of bankruptcy laws, increased the size and complexity of government bureaucracy. By the end of the nineteenth-century, the cost of administering bankrupt estates was one of the largest items of government expenditure. Dr Lester places Victorian management of insolvency in the context of other legal reforms, the relationship between the legal and business communities, and the development of the modern British state.