Winston Churchill described Joseph Chamberlain as ''the man who made the weather'' for twenty years in British politics between the 1880s and the 1900s. This volume contains contributions on every aspect of Chamberlain''s career, including international and cultural perspectives hitherto ignored by his many biographers. It breaks his career into three aspects: his career as an international statesman, defender of British interests and champion of imperial federation; his role as a national leader, opposing Gladstone''s crusade for Irish home rule by forming an alliance with the Conservatives, campaigning for social reform and finally advocating a protectionist economic policy to promote British business; and the aspect for which he is still celebrated in his adopted city, as the provider of sanitation, gas lighting, clean water and cultural achievement for Birmingham - a model of civic regeneration that still inspires modern politicians such as Michael Heseltine, Tristram Hunt and David Willetts.

"Joseph Chamberlain, the only British politician to have split both major parties, pioneered all the changes that were to distinguish twentieth-century politics from nineteenth - the extension of democracy, the development of local government and a national system of education, indeed the idea that the state has a social responsibility for all of its citizens. He was also the first to sense the decline in Britain''s international position and to appreciate that rapid and bold action was needed to avert it. No one can understand twentieth-century Britain without coming to grips with him. This volume provides an excellent approach to his career." - Vernon Bogdanor, King''s College, London, UK 
  
"This collection of essays, derived from a conference held to mark the centenary of the death of Joseph Chamberlain in 1914, is by turns scholarly and spiky, sceptical and sympathetic, and always a highly entertaining read. It explores, and re-interprets, Chamberlains many-sided activities, as a controversial and creative boss of Birmingham politics, as a constructive yet destructive force in British public life, and as a commanding but disappointed statesman of Empire. As such, it is the best book on Joseph Chamberlain since Peter Marsh''s magisterial biography, and there can be no higher praise than that." - David Cannadine, Princeton university, USA