Joseph Chamberlain (PDF)

Ian Cawood is Reader in Modern History and Head of History at Newman University, UK. He is also Programme Leader for the MA in Victorian Studies and a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy. His most recent book is The Liberal Unionist Party: A History (2012).

Chris Upton was Reader in Public History at Newman University, UK, author of A History of Birmingham (1993) and Living Back to Back (2005), among many other scholarly and popular publications. He was a regular columnist for the Birmingham Post and historical consultant for the BBC, the National Trust, the Birmingham Museums Trust, the Guardian and Birmingham City Council. Chris Upton sadly died in October 2015, shortly after completing this book.

"Joseph Chamberlain, the only British politician to have split both major parties, pioneered all the changes that were to distinguish twentieth-century politics from nineteenth - the extension of democracy, the development of local government and a national system of education, indeed the idea that the state has a social responsibility for all of its citizens. He was also the first to sense the decline in Britain's international position and to appreciate that rapid and bold action was needed to avert it. No one can understand twentieth-century Britain without coming to grips with him. This volume provides an excellent approach to his career." - Vernon Bogdanor, King's College, London, UK



"This collection of essays, derived from a conference held to mark the centenary of the death of Joseph Chamberlain in 1914, is by turns scholarly and spiky, sceptical and sympathetic, and always a highly entertaining read. It explores, and re-interprets, Chamberlains many-sided activities, as a controversial and creative boss of Birmingham politics, as a constructive yet destructive force in British public life, and as a commanding but disappointed statesman of Empire. As such, it is the best book on Joseph Chamberlain since Peter Marsh's magisterial biography, and there can be no higher praise than that." - David Cannadine, University of London, UK