This book is both an examination of one of the dominant figures of twentieth-century British politics, and a contribution to the understanding of political leadership and Conservative ideology. It reinterprets the career of Stanley Baldwin, Conservative leader 1923-37 and three times prime minister, in terms of his construction of a "public character," his exploitation of the new mass media, and his exposition of a distinctive Conservative doctrine and language. Baldwin's remarkable ascendancy is shown to have been based on his manipulation of widely-held "national values."