ABSTRACT
‘A man who enters politics young’, noted Chamberlain in one of his more reflective moments, ‘must be either extraordinarily gifted with foresight or singularly incapable of profiting by experience, if he does not find it necessary to modify and largely to recast his views in the course of his life.’ Chamberlain’s family life is central to an understanding of his political career. To have lived for the first forty years of his life in the same house as the magisterial figure who was his father left an incalculable impression upon him. Unlike Joseph Chamberlain and Neville Chamberlain he did not have the early grounding in local politics which might have given him a stronger interest in and commitment to the day-to-day concerns of his electorate. Despite his often expressed attachment to Birmingham his whole career was geared towards the national and not the local political canvas.
