¹ Iremonger, Lucille, The Fiery Chariot: a Study of British Prime Ministers and the Search for Love (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1970).Google Scholar Further references to this work will be signified by the relevant page number in the text.

² Donnelly, Desmond, Daily Telegraph, 3 12 1970.Google Scholar

³ Barber, James David, The Lawmakers: Recruitment and Adaptation to Legislative Life (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 225.Google Scholar

⁴ Greenstein, Fred I., Personality and Politics (Chicago: Markham 1969), Chap. 2.Google Scholar

⁵ Greenstein, , Personality and Politics, pp. 40–57.Google Scholar

⁶ Freud, Sigmund (trans, by Strachey, James et at.), Complete Psychological Works Vol. XIX 1923–25: The Ego and the Id and Other Works (London: Hogarth Press, 1961), p. 36.Google Scholar

⁷ In calculating this percentage the one known illegitimate prime minister has been ignored. Furthermore, in order to ensure comparability with the 1921 Census figures, Peel, who lost his mother after his fifteenth birthday, and who was one of the leaders studied by Mrs. Iremonger, has not been counted as bereaved.

⁸ According to the Census figures a child aged fourteen had twice as high a chance of losing a father as of losing a mother (11.6 per cent had lost a father, 5.6 per cent a mother). Evidence presented below shows that amongst nineteenth-century peers the rate of paternal bereavement was probably about twice as high as the rate of maternal death, despite risks from childbirth. Rutter, Michael, Children of Sick Parents (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 50Google Scholar, cites unpublished figures from the national survey of legitimate children throughout the country born during one week in 1946, which show that at all ages the paternal deaths exceeded the maternal deaths by from 50 per cent to 100 per cent. Several other studies have shown an excess of paternal over maternal deaths. By assuming that two-sevenths of the paternal deaths in 1921 can be attributed to the war we obtain a ‘normal’ rate of 60:40. There would seem to be three reasons for the higher death rate of fathers: (i) men marry later in life than women, (ii) men have a lower expectation of life and (iii) there is the risk of the father dying between conception and the birth of the child.

⁹ The sample for 1900 was drawn from. Who's Who, 1900 (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1900), pp. 54–6Google Scholar, and that for 1841 from Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, Vol. LVI (1841) (London: Hansard, 1841).Google Scholar

¹⁰ It could no doubt be argued, given this difference, that a dramatic fall in the relevant death rates between the end of the eighteenth century and the second quarter of the nineteenth might explain part of the difference. This seems unlikely as the bereavement rate in the earlier sample of peers, whose median year of birth was 1784, is not much higher than that of the second sample whose median year of birth was 1844. Moreover, there were as many bereaved prime ministers amongst the ‘second twelve’ (Disraeli to Chamberlain) as amongst the ‘first twelve’ (Perceval to Palmerston). Macdonald is here counted as bereaved. My former colleague, Howard Machin, has observed that peers are not a perfect control group because they will include a disproportionate number of eldest sons, whose chances of losing a parent in childhood are, by virtue of their being the eldest, less than those of all children of peers. In fact, this problem does not seem to impair the comparison: eight of the twenty-four prime ministers were themselves hereditary peers, and some of the peers were newly-created, thus blurring the distinction between the two categories. Moreover, the average age of the prime ministers’ fathers at the birth of their sons was 35 years 7 months whereas the average age of the fathers of the 1900 sample of peers (the relevant data were not collected for the 1841 sample) at the birth of their sons was 35 years 2 months; the average age at death of the prime ministers’ fathers was 63 years 3 months, and of the fathers of the peers of 1900 was 65 years 3 months. If the prime ministers were distinguished at all it was not so much by being born to older fathers, as by having fathers who died younger. As the lists of peers included minors, who were only there because they had lost a father before the age of 21, the original samples were biased in another way. Two minors drawn in the sample of 1900, and one drawn in the 1841 sample, were therefore excluded. All three had been bereaved by the age of 16. The control samples, it must be noted, will include peers who distinguished themselves in politics — who are likely to be particularly well represented amongst the peers of first creation. If Mrs. Iremonger's thesis is correct, the number of the bereaved in the control samples will be higher than in a sample of the politically uninvolved.

¹¹ Iremonger gives figures of nine and five respectively — this is presumably an error.

¹² Two out of fourteen for the Gladstone Cabinet of 1868; one out of thirteen for the Gladstone Cabinet of 1880; one out of eighteen for the Salisbury Cabinet of 1895; one out of nineteen for the Salisbury Cabinet of 1900 (post-election) and two out of eighteen for Campbell-Bannerman's Cabinet in 1905.

¹³ These percentages relate to the number of Cabinet ministers other than the prime minister.

¹⁴ In each case the Cabinet appointed immediately after the resignation of its predecessor has been taken. The composition of each Cabinet is shown in the relevant volume of Hansard.

¹⁵ For Horney's doctrines, see especially Horney, Karen, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (New York: W. W. Norton, 1937)Google Scholar and her later Neurosis and Human Growth (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951).Google Scholar Psychodynamic interpretations of political behaviour and belief have been dominated, to a surprising extent, by Freud and his intellectual legatees. In addition to Horney, Adler, with his emphasis on the striving for superiority, affords a useful startingpoint: see, for example, Adler, A., Problems of Neurosis (New York: Harper and Row, 1964)Google Scholar, and Adler, A. in , H. L. and Ansbacher, R. R., eds., Superiority and Social Interest (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965).Google Scholar The doctrines of O. Hobart Mowrer seem to be especially illuminating for an understanding of radical political leaders. Mowrer's, work is rather scattered but the best introduction is to be found in Part II of his Learning Theory andPersonality Dynamics (New York: The Ronald Co., 1950).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Horney, , Neurotic Personality of Our Time, p. 80.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Horney, , Neurotic Personality of Our Time, p. 92.Google Scholar

¹⁸ In Neurotic Personality of Our Time Horney actually enumerates four strategies — the fourth being submissiveness. In her later book Neurosis and Human Growth Horney reduced the strategies to three by, in effect, subsuming submissiveness and the search for affection under the general heading of ‘the self-effacing solution’.

¹⁹ Horney, , Neurotic Personality of Our Time, p. 96.Google Scholar

²⁰ Horney, , Neurotic Personality of Our Time, p. 101.Google Scholar

²¹ Horney, , Neurotic Personality of Our Time, p. 163.Google Scholar

²² Horney, , Neurotic Personality of Our Time, pp. 171–2.Google Scholar

²³ Horney, , Neurotic Personality of Our Time, p. 175.Google Scholar

²⁴ Horney, , Neurotic Personality of Our Time, p. 178.Google Scholar

²⁵ Churchill, Randolph S., Winston S. Churchill, Vol. I, Youth 1874–1900 (London: Heinemann, 1966).Google Scholar

²⁶ Blake, Robert, Disraeli (London: University Paperbacks, 1969), pp. 15–17.Google Scholar Blake sees Disraeli, from the age of twenty upwards as a ‘youth of immense ambition, consumed with an almost insolent determination to make his mark’.

²⁷ The classic work on maternal deprivation is Bowlby's, JohnChild Care and the Growth of Love (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953).Google Scholar For a critique of this and similar work see Rutter, M.Maternal Deprivation Re-Assessed (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973)Google Scholar; see also, by the same author, Children of Sick Parents.

²⁸ Katz, Elihu and Lazersfeld, Paul F., Personal Influence (New York: The Free Press, 1964), P. 324.Google Scholar

²⁹ Kavanagh, D., Constituency Electioneering in Britain (London: Longmans, 1970), pp. 81–4.Google Scholar

³⁰ See also Cecil, Lady Gwendolen, Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury, Vol. I, 1830–68 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1921), pp. 12–16.Google Scholar

³¹ Sir Feiling, K., Life of Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), p. 9.Google Scholar

³² Sir Magnus, P., Gladstone (London: John Murray, 1963), p. 5.Google Scholar

³³ Cecil, Lord David, Melbourne (London: The Reprint Society, 1955), p. 25.Google Scholar

³⁴ Also James, R. R., Rosebery (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1963), p. 486.Google Scholar

³⁵ Churchill, , Winston S. Churchill Vol. I, p. 128.Google Scholar The words in brackets had been crossed out.

³⁶ Guttsman, W. L., The British Political Elite (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1963), p. 152.Google Scholar

³⁷ Blake, R., The Unknown Prime Minister (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1955), p. 31.Google Scholar

³⁸ Feiling, , Life of Neville Chamberlain, p. 10.Google Scholar

³⁹ Middlemas, K. and Barnes, J., Baldwin (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p. 15.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Attlee, C. R., As It Happened (London: Odhams Press, 1955), p. 18.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Macmillan, H., Winds of Change 1914–39 (London: Macmillan, 1966), p. 42.Google Scholar

⁴² Hutchinson, G., Edward Heath: A Personal and Political Biography (London: Longmans, 1970), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

⁴³ There is no evidence, however, that either Heath or Powell had unhappy childhoods — though, as mentioned later, Powell was regarded as a loner at school.

⁴⁴ Roth, Andrew, Enoch Powell:Tory Tribune (London: Macdonald, 1970), p. 15.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ James, , Rosebery, p. 15.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Macmillan, , Winds of Change, p. 41.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Holland, B., Life of the Duke of Devonshire, Vol. I, 2nd edn. (London: Longmans, Green, 1911), p. 271.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Holland, , Life of the Duke of Devonshire, Vol. I, p. 11.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Foot, M., Aneurin Bevan, Vol. I,1897–1945 (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1962), pp. 21–2.Google Scholar For a viewpoint that stuttering may not be the cause of isolation but in effect a consequence of it, see Mowrer's, O. H. ‘Stuttering as Simultaneous Admission and Denial’, Journal of Communication Disorders, I (1967), 46–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁰ Donoughue, B. and Jones, G. W., Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), p. 9.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Roth, , Powell, p. 14.Google Scholar

⁵² Spender and Asquith, writing perhaps with an excess of piety, political and filial, claim that Asquith was ‘a good mixer’ but go on to confess that, in some but by no means all ways, he was shy. His reserve, they admit, ‘was capable of being misread as standoffishness’. See Spender, J. A. and Asquith, Cyril, Life of Herbert Henry Asquith, Lord Oxford and Asquith, Vol. I (London: Hutchinson, 1932), p. 26.Google Scholar

⁵³ Feiling, , Life of Neville Chamberlain, p. 33.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Taylor, H. A., The Strange Case of Andrew Bonar Law (London: Stanley Paul, no date), p. 20.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Chamberlain, Austen, Down The Years, 5th edn. (London: Cassell, 1935), p. 220.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ James, , Rosebery, p. 491.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Macmillan, , Winds of Change, p. 41.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Roth, , Powell, pp. 49 and 58.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Donoughue, and Jones, , Herbert Morrison, pp. 17, 22, 31, 51–2.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Another striking contradiction is provided in Michael Foot's biography of Aneurin Bevan. According to Foot, Bevan was always searching for serenity in his own life; it is surprising that anyone who yearned so much for serenity should have gone into politics, and remarkable that one who yearned for it should have behaved as Bevan did. See Foot, Michael, Aneurin Bevan, Vol. II, 1945–60 (London: Davis-Poynter, 1973), p. 105.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Powell, Enoch, The Listener, 11 10 1973.Google Scholar

⁶² Lasswell, Harold, Psychopathology and Politics (New York: Viking Press, 1960).Google Scholar

⁶³ Macmillan, , Winds of Change, p. 41.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Barber, , The Lawmakers, p. 224.Google Scholar Barber was not writing of men of prime ministerial ability, but the substance of his point is not affected.

⁶⁵ It would be illuminating to compare the rate of parental bereavement amongst permanent secretaries with that of prime ministers. We might even find they were similar. If so, the resources of ingenuity would not be unequal to the task of finding an explanation. It is by such vicissitudes that the empire of knowledge extends its frontiers.

⁶⁶ For a psychological study of recent presidents see Barber, James David, The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972).Google Scholar

⁶⁷ ‘I think it's a damned bore’, he said after being offered the premiership. ‘I am in many minds as to what to do.’ See Cecil, , Melbourne, p. 224.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ For Attlee's admission of shyness, see Attlee, , As It Happened, p. 28.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Quoted in Churchill, , Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 1, p. 241.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ For the view that Dilke was the victim of a conspiracy, see Jenkins, Roy, Sir Charles Dilke (London: Collins, 1958).Google Scholar Jenkins admits, however, that Dilke, if innocent of an affair with Mrs. Crawford, had probably been guilty of other liaisons.

⁷¹ For a conscious realization of this, see Mayhew's, ChristopherParty Games (London: Hutchinson, 1969), pp. 16–18Google Scholar, and from a different position on the left, Blackburn, Robin, The Listener, 22 01 1970.Google Scholar

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⁷³ For a valuable discussion of such studies, see Greenstein, Personality and Politics, Chap. 3. force of the quest for self-sufficiency which has dominated his whole life, both private and public’ See Churchill, Randolph, The Rise and Fall of Sir Anthony Eden (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1959), pp. 22–6.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Rokeach, M., The Open and Closed Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1960), p. 288.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Again, there is a danger in this kind of study of seeking to have things both ways; if a man is willing to compromise he is stigmatized as being indiscriminately compliant; if he refuses to agree, he is dubbed as being compulsively obstinate. The distinction between normal flexibility and indiscriminate compliance is, as Hyman and Sheatsley said of similar distinctions in The Authoritarian Personality, ‘subtle’ and ‘elusive’. Great care is clearly required when making them — but this is not to say that the distinctions do not exist. See Hyman, H. and Sheatsley, P. ‘ “The Authoritarian Personality” — A Methodological Critique’, in Christie, R. and Jahoda, M., eds., Studies in the Scope and Method of ‘The Authoritarian Personality’ (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1954), PP. 82–4.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ A. Storr in Churchill, : Four Faces and The Man (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1969).Google Scholar