Forgotten Patriot: A Life of Alfred, Viscount Milner of St. James's And Cape Town, 1854-1925

"Forgotten Patriot is the story of one man's almost Roman dedication to duty, principle, and the British Empire. Alfred Milner rose from middle-class obscurity to haughty South African High Commissioner and then, after a decade in the wilderness, found redemption as the right hand of David Lloyd George in the five-man War Cabinet of 1916-1918. Revered and reviled, Milner inspired the imperial faithful, including his famous "kindergarten," while at the same time serving as a lightning rod for critics of Empire." "This work covers the entire sweep of Milner's career, exploring fully in themselves overlooked areas, including Milner's place in the newspaper "information milieu," his attempts to bring working men into the Unionist fold (before, during, and after the Great War), his conspiratorial role in the 1914 Ulster Crisis, his key, but mostly forgotten, place in the First World War, the Peace of Paris and, throughout, his private life. The book reveals, as has no other, relationships with Margot Tennant (later Asquith), to whom Milner first proposed marriage, his mistress Cecile Duval, the novelist Elinor Glyn, and his two-decades-long liaison with Violet Cecil, who became his wife in 1921, only four years before Milner's death."--BOOK JACKET.J. Lee Thompson is the author of 'Forgotten Patriot: A Life of Alfred, Viscount Milner of St. James's And Cape Town, 1854-1925', published 2007 under ISBN 9780838641217 and ISBN 0838641210.