This series explores how prime ministers have used their power & responded to the great challenges of their time & how they made the job what it is today: Sir Robert Walpole the first & 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 & dominated mid-Victorian politics; Benjamin Disraeli turned his skills as a novelist to politics & became Britains 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 & 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 & managed the big political beasts in his Cabinet. The BBCs Nick Robinson presents his fascinating & absorbing Radio 4 series featuring eight famous British prime ministers.