Book Description

Can you name the creator of the Territorial Army, the British Expeditionary Force, the Imperial General Staff, and the Officers' Training Corps? The man who laid the foundation stones of MI5, MI6, the RAF, the LSE, Imperial College, the "redbrick" universities, and the Medical Research Council? This book restores Richard Burdon Haldane to his rightful place among the great men of British and Canadian history. Serving as war minister in the 1905 Liberal British government, his groundbreaking proposals on defence, education, and government structure were astonishingly ahead of his time – the very building blocks of modern Britain. Even the Canadian Constitution, as now interpreted, is unthinkable without Haldane. His ubiquitous networks ranged from Wilde to Einstein, Churchill to Carnegie, king to kaiser; his polymathic interests enabled pioneering cross-party, cross-sector cooperation. Yet in 1915 he was ejected from the Lord Chancellorship, unjustly vilified by an ignorant press campaign as a German sympathizer. John Campbell charts these ups and downs, reveals the intensely personal side of Haldane through previously unpublished love letters, and shows his enormous relevance in our search for just societies and states today. Amidst political and national instability, it is surely now right to reinstate Haldane as an outstanding example of true statesmanship.