This book offers a clear narrative of Clement Attlee’s political career. It moves relatively swiftly over his late Victorian childhood, his public school education at Haileybury, his undergraduate studies in history at University College Oxford, his training (and short career) as a barrister, his social work in London’s East End, his lecturing experience at the London School of Economics, and his military service during the First World War, which saw him attain the rank of major. Attlee’s political trajectory from the 1920s is given more substantial coverage. Having earlier joined the Independent Labour Party, he became Labour MP for Limehouse in 1922 and served as parliamentary private secretary to Ramsay MacDonald during the 1924 Labour government. He was a member of the Simon Commission on India and became postmaster general toward the end of the 1929–31 Labour government. Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds recounts the way in which Attlee rose up the Labour ranks after 1931 partly by default. He narrowly held his seat in Labour’s sweeping electoral defeat in 1931, which saw many party heavyweights defeated. By the time he triumphed in the 1935 Labour leadership contest, Attlee had already been deputy leader for four years. Thomas-Symonds also charts the manner in which Attlee, surviving a number of challenges to his position along the way, led Labour into the wartime coalition in 1940, becoming deputy prime minister in 1942 and, in 1945, the first prime minister of a majority Labour government.

The overarching argument put forward in the book is that Attlee adopted a “chairmanship” style of leadership. Thomas-Symonds argues that he preferred to select his colleagues carefully and then allow them to get on with their jobs, directly intervening only occasionally. He argues that this method was often effective and that it suited Attlee’s personality. He suggests that Attlee employed his strategy to particularly good effect during Aneurin Bevan’s attempt to set up the National Health Service (NHS). Attlee gave Bevan just enough backing to ensure that he treaded carefully and worked with, and did not alienate, the British Medical Association. Yet, on other occasions, Thomas-Symonds contends that Attlee’s leadership style was less successful. Taking a more critical position than earlier biographies, including the most detailed accounts by Kenneth Harris, Trevor Burridge, and Jerry Brookshire, he calls into question Attlee’s judgment over when and where to mediate. Attlee is chastised for not intervening in a more decisive manner during the 1946–47 fuel shortage by pushing for a scheme of compulsory rationing before the situation escalated. Conversely, he is criticized for his intervention over India where, while accepting partition, he set a rapid timetable for British withdrawal and (it is argued) should share some of the responsibility for the bloodshed that followed. In terms of party management, Thomas-Symonds holds Attlee to blame for not preventing the split between Aneurin Bevan and Hugh Gaitkell, which erupted publicly in 1951 over the latter’s decision to introduce NHS charges for false teeth and glasses to help fund rearmament for the Korean War. Thomas-Symonds argues that managing the developing animosity between the two figures, which went on to contribute to Labour’s electoral failures in the 1950s, should have been an ideal opportunity for Attlee to exert his consensus-building skills of chairmanship. Instead, he allowed Bevan to resign when he could, at least temporarily, have sidelined the issue. Perhaps Attlee could have done more, but it is important not to push this point too far. The struggle between the two men was not solely about personal politics. It was a reinvigorated battle between Labour’s center right and its left about the direction the party should take—a division that had been manifest in the 1930s and powerfully reemerged in the 1980s.

Most of Thomas-Symonds’s criticism is leveled at Attlee’s failure to use his leadership style effectively, but, at times, he comes close to implying that he is less than impressed by the model of leadership itself. He is, for instance, critical of the fact that Attlee did not meet U.S. President Truman between November 1945 and December 1950. He suggests that more frequent meetings could have strengthened Britain’s position, noting that at the 1950 meeting Attlee secured an agreement that the United States would not use the atomic bomb without first consulting Britain and Canada. Yet a more interventionist stance arguably would have only undermined the position of Ernest Bevin as foreign secretary.

The book is not based on any significant new primary sources, relying largely on the Attlee papers and material from the National Archives together with Hansard and reports of the Labour party conference, and offers little in terms of substantive detail that is not familiar to scholars of this period. It is, however, a readable and accessible account, conveying in particular a strong sense of the personal aspects of Labour’s high political rivalries (especially that between Bevin and Herbert Morrison, which served to buttress Attlee’s position at the helm). The book also discusses a number of important themes: Attlee’s long-standing dislike of communism dating from the pre–First World War period, his patriotism (including his use of the title “major” well into the interwar period), his enduring interest in the idea of world government, his flirtation with left-wing rhetoric (stimulated by the 1931 crisis but lingering late into the 1930s), and his preference for practicality over philosophy (perhaps initially seen most clearly during his time on the Simon Commission). Further reflection on how exactly these elements fused together is perhaps beyond the scope of the book’s focus on “leadership,” but an assessment of these factors, especially from a more critical perspective than previous biographies, would undoubtedly have contributed to a deeper understanding of Attlee’s political outlook.