Page 40

PRIA

(^) Daily Mail, Friday, August 16, 2019
by David
Leafe
five children, numerous times.
One liaison was with the wife
of a fellow MP and another
with one of Margaret’s cousins,
a woman he allegedly seduced
when her husband, a doctor,
was out on an emergency call.
According to Richard Lloyd
George, his father had at least
two children with other women,
but his mother tolerated his
behaviour because she knew
that he was not emotionally
involved with any of the
mistresses concerned.
That all changed in 1911 when
Lloyd George was Chancellor
of the Exchequer and Frances
Stevenson, a young teacher
from London, was asked to
spend the summer holidays at
the family home in Wales,
tutoring nine year-old Megan
Lloyd George before she began
boarding school.
Only 22, to Lloyd George’s 48,
she fulfilled his constant need
for attention and adulation as
described by his son.
‘All his life he had... fed on
the love of those around him,
like a monster greedy child
who demands everything as
his right and gives nothing of
himself in return.’
‘Pussy’, as he called Frances,
never tired of telling her ‘Tom
Cat’ what he wanted to hear,
attending his speeches in the
House of Commons and
sending him notes of praise
from the gallery.
In return he told her what she
wanted to hear, that his mar-
riage was dead and he remained
with Margaret only because of
his children and his career. It
was far from true but his feel-
ings for Frances were genuine
and he wanted her as a perma-
nent fixture — along with his
wife. He offered her a job as
secretary at the Treasury — on
condition that she became his
full-time mistress.
In accepting, she was signing
up for what another biographer,
the Labour politician Roy
Hattersley, describes as ‘a
lifetime of subterfuge
and humiliation’.
In the early years of their
relationship, Frances is
thought to have had at least
two abortions at her lover’s

N

OTHInG could have

prepared the young

broadcaster for the sight

which greeted him when

he was dispatched by

the BBC to interview veteran

politician David Lloyd George in

the aftermath of the general

election of 1935.

Knocking on the door of the former

Liberal Prime Minister’s Cardiff hotel

room, Wynn Vaughan-Thomas entered

to find the 72-year-old sitting in bed

with a topless young woman either side

of him. Told to unpack his recording

equipment and ‘get on with it’, he did

just that, Lloyd George as unfazed at

being questioned naked as he was by

the presence of his nubile companions.

They were just two of the multitude of

women who, over the decades, fell for

the charms of the man later described

by his son Richard as ‘the greatest Don

Juan in the history of British politics’.

Even in his 80s, he was still chasing

women — ignoring repeated rejections

from the Land Girls who worked on his

Surrey estate during World War II.

Among them was the twentysomething

Jean Campbell-Harris, later Baroness

Trumpington. She recalled how Lloyd

George once asked if he could check her

vital statistics with a tape measure, a

request she said she brushed off.

‘With an attractive woman he was as

much to be trusted as a Bengal tiger

with a gazelle,’ Richard observed in his

1960 biography of his father.

For all the controversy over the colour-

ful love life of our new and famously pri-

apic PM, ‘Bonking Boris’ is unlikely ever

to match Lloyd George’s antics. There

are, however, parallels between the two.

Boris and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds

moved into Downing Street last month,

after some speculation that she would

live in the £1.3 million home they recently

purchased in South London.

Their decision has attracted

controversy because not only is the PM

still married to his second wife and

mother of his four children, Marina

Wheeler, but because he and Ms

Symonds are the first unmarried couple

to take up official residence there.

But a century earlier Lloyd George

pre-empted this flaunting of moral

convention — and went one better.

Between 1916 and 1922, he shared the

most famous address in Britain not just

with his mistress but his wife too.

A

n open secret in political

circles, but never reported in

the more circumspect press of

the day, this prime ministerial

ménage à trois surprised no one who

had even the slightest acquaintance

with Whitehall’s most notorious

womaniser — and especially not his

trusted aide A. J. Sylvester.

One evening he was asked to pass a

change of clothes to his boss as he

stepped out of the bath. As he recalled

in his diaries, Sylvester couldn’t help

noticing ‘the biggest organ I had ever

seen. no wonder they [women] are

always after him — and he after them.’

By the time he became Prime Minister

in 1916 aged 53, the schoolmaster’s son

from rural north Wales was a prolific

philanderer, cheating on Margaret, his

wife of 30 years and the mother of their

...no, not Boris, but Lloyd

George — the premier so

sex-obsessed that while his

wife was upstairs at No 10,

he was in coalition with his

mistress on the ground floor

PM!

PRIA

A V E RY

Coroner

condemns

1972 Army

killing of

IRA youth

THE killing by a British soldier of an IRA man
as he ran across a field in Londonderry in 1972
was unjustified, a coroner has concluded.
The shooting of Seamus Bradley, 19, by a soldier
from the Royal Scots Regiment in the Creggan
area of the city has long been a source of dispute.
He was killed on July 31 during Operation Motor-
man, an Army attempt to gain control of republi-
can areas in Belfast and Londonderry.
The Army claimed he had climbed a tree in Bish-
op’s Field armed with a machine gun. He was shot
and injured again as he fell. His family alleged he
was injured and his neck was broken when he was
tortured and interrogated by soldiers.
Coroner judge Patrick Kinney rejected both ver-
sions of events at Belfast Coroner’s Court yester-
day. He said he was satisfied Mr Bradley was killed
by a soldier who got out of a Saracen armoured
car, dropped to one knee and fired. He said he had
not been able to confirm the soldier’s identity.
The coroner said he had found the evidence of
witness Raymond Carton, who saw events from
his living room window, particularly persuasive.
The coroner, who said Mr Bradley could have

A COUNCIL is facing outrage after charging the
NHS thousands of pounds to park its breast can-
cer screening van.
Cornwall Council billed the NHS for using its car
parks all over the county and one six-month stay
in Liskeard last year cost more than £1,500. A
patient said: ‘I think it’s disgusting, especially
when the NHS is facing a funding crisis.’
The council said it would stop charging the
vehicles. It said it was unable to confirm the
total the NHS had been asked to pay.

Verdict: Danny Bradley with a picture of his

late brother outside the court yesterday

Daily Mail Reporter

Parking bills for

cancer check van

‘No evidence of the

use of barbed wire’

survived if properly treated by soldiers who found
him, will send a report on the case to northern
Ireland’s Director of Public Prosecutions.
He said Mr Bradley was not posing a threat and
the soldier had breached the Army’s ‘yellow card’
rules by opening fire. ‘[Mr Bardley] was running
across an open area ... and the fact he did not hold
a weapon was clearly visible,’ he said.
The coroner said there was no evidence the deci-
sion to fire was made ‘under particular pressure’.
However, he also said there was nothing in the
autopsy to back claims of torture. He added:
‘There is no evidence of strangulation, a broken
neck or the use of barbed wire.’
An inquest in 1973 returned an open verdict.
northern Ireland’s Attorney General ordered a new
inquest in 2013. Outside court Mr Bradley’s brother
Danny said: ‘I am very happy with the verdict.’