BBC Radio 4 - fascinating archive documentary about David Lloyd George - "Lloyd George's Revolution"

Not about the Welsh language, but about a great Welshman, a great Briton, and a great statesman:

Drawing on sound archive of David Lloyd George and key contemporary witnesses, Peter Hennessy tells how Lloyd George revolutionised Britain’s government when he became prime minister a century ago. In the darkest days of World War I, Lloyd George transformed an amateurish approach to government and galvanized a war weary country by radically reforming the Cabinet, bringing outsiders (‘men of push and go’) into Whitehall and creating new departments. […]

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Heard it, loved it! Had very strong notion that WW1 would have ended very differently if LG hadn’t sorted out, first the munitions manufacture and then the mechanics of British government, which, of course, was still running as if in about the 17th century! The army ditto, although the Generals did learn not to refer to the enemy as the French in the Crimean war!
I suspect that, without LG, Churchill wouldn’t have known how to sort things out for WW2. LG set up the convoy system, for example!

Including introducing women into the workforce. A funny story there is that my grandmother was working at one time behind the bar (in what I think was a quite respectable hotel of the time), in Barrow-in-Furness. However, she had got to know someone that her mother referred to as “an older man”. Great-grandmother wanted to put an end to this relationship, and so she forbade her daughter to continue working there. So my grandmother went and got herself a job working on munitions at Vickers-Armstrong…where by happy co-incidence, “the older man” also worked. So they got to see even more of each other. This was of course my eventual grandfather.

In case anyone is interested and hasn’t noticed, BBC1 TV are showing a programme about Lloyd George by Dan Snow on Wednesday at 9.00 pm, that’s BBC Wales! Apparently John and Dan Snow are descended from DLG! I don’t know on which side of the blanket! I looked a bit for anything on S4C but have not found anything yet. We don’t get ITV Wales easily, so I can’t help there!

Perhaps Lloyd George knew their father…

:slight_smile:

Bu’r cyfarfod rhwng Lloyd George a Hitler yn bwnc dadleuol iawn o’r cychwyn cyntaf un. Mae sawl barn a sawl safbwynt ynglŷn â pham y gwnaeth rywbeth mor syfrdanol ac annodweddiadol o ddyn a fu’n Rhyddfrydwr ar hyd ei oes.

Yn 1936, roedd Lloyd George yn 73 oed a Hitler yn 46 oed. Roedd y naill ym machlud ei oes a’i ddyddiau euraidd wedi hen fynd heibio, a’r llall yn dringo tuag at anterth ei rym ychydig flynyddoedd cyn yr Ail Ryfel Byd.

Mae’r ddrama hon gan William Owen Roberts yn ceisio edrych ar beth oedd wrth wraidd Lloyd George yn cyhoeddi erthygl yn canmol Hitler i’r cymylau.

Actorion: Richard Elfyn, William Thomas, Nia Roberts ac Adam Wyn Jones.

(If I remember correctly, Richard Elfyn was the Prif Weinidog Cymru in Byw Celwydd ).

Oh dear. He is brilliant at making me cringe!! Shudder! :cold_sweat:

just a bit more info to add to henddraig’s post about the Dan Snow programme coming up tonight - http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/lloyd-george-great-great-grandfather-12264154

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I’ve been wandering around Wikipedia, reading about LG and his family and descendants. A fascinating little story, about Owen Lloyd George, his grandson (son of Richard, LG’s eldest son):

On the death of his grandfather in March 1945, Lloyd-George experienced an imaginative gesture on the part of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who determined that all four of his old friend’s grandsons in the services should be brought home to attend the funeral in north Wales. One was firing his guns across the Rhine, another was flying a bomber, a third was serving in HMS Enterprise in the North Sea and the fourth, Lloyd-George, was fighting in Italy. Lloyd-George was at once dispatched to Naples by fighter plane, given a bed in Field Marshal Alexander’s villa, flown by bomber to England the next morning, whisked up to north Wales in a Spitfire (flown by a Polish pilot with a schoolboy atlas and no knowledge of Wales) and delivered at Llanystumdwy one hour before the funeral.[2]

I love that story! And I had been mulling over ‘Snow’ as a name for LG’s descendants. I gather it was all above board, they are descended from a daughter! It isn’t like John Snow in Game of Thrones!!

It seems to be hard to find recordings of LG speaking Welsh, but this is one:

(short, and the audio level is fairly low).

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I’ll have to wait until I’m on the lap top! Too faint on iPad! Thanks for the find!

He was known to argue in Welsh with the Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919…

The pity, the irony… No chair, no crown, no works judged good enough, and War , WW2, declared just after the Eisteddfod. And for that Eisteddfod, LG speaks and is recorded and remembered!
…and the last place he mentions…Syria!

It would have been wonderful to have been a fly on the wall then.

Most of the sound recordings that one can easily find are from fairly late in his life, and in English, with barely a trace of a Welsh accent.

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