There is really in law no such office as that of Prime Minister. No statute grants him or her powers. Even the name came into official use only in 1878, and the Prime Minister as such only became known to the law in 1905. The office of Prime Minister has in fact been based on convention and has been shaped by personal and political factors; it is what the holder makes of it and that is why a sensible way to study the development of the office is by reading the biographies of its holders.

Originally published in 1974 (volume 1) and 1975 (volume 2), beginning with Robert Walpole and including Edward Heath, the holder at the time, there had been forty-seven Prime Ministers in all. Yet there had been no book devoted exclusively to recording their characters, actions and achievements, to which the student or the interested general reader could turn for immediate information, even if they did not seek to read the whole 250-year record – in itself a fascinating story for the politically minded. To fill this gap leading political historians of the time were invited to contribute papers, each in their own special period, and we are presented, as a result, with a complete gallery of Prime Ministers, each paper revealing the constant interaction of personality and circumstance, and the whole collection providing an impressive record of the way the premiership changed with its various incumbents.

Herbert van Thal (1904–1983) was a British bookseller, publisher, agent, biographer, and anthologist.