This series explores how prime ministers have used their power and responded to the great challenges of their time and how they made the job what it is today.
- Sir Robert Walpole; the first and longest-serving prime minister.
- Lord North; remembered as the prime minister who lost America.
- Sir Robert Peel; who put national interest before party.
- Lord Palmerston; who cultivated a cavalier image and dominated mid-Victorian politics.
- Benjamin Disraeli turned his skills as a novelist to politics and became Britain's first Jewish-born prime minister.
- David Lloyd George, Welsh radical who set up the early welfare state, became a presidential PM in the First World War and split the Liberal party.
- Stanley Baldwin, the first prime minister to master radio broadcasting, his notion of Englishness shaped inter-war Britain.
- Clement Attlee, who lacked any charisma, but created the modern welfare state and managed the big political beasts in his Cabinet.
The BBC's Nick Robinson presents his fascinating and absorbing Radio 4 series featuring eight famous British prime ministers.
Extract from speech by Lloyd George: © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.