The English statesman Harold Wilson (1916-1995), who served as prime minister and leader of the Labour party, was one of the most skillful political tacticians in 20th-century British history. James Harold Wilson was born on March 11, 1916, in...

HAROLD WILSON. By Ben Pimlott. HarperCollins; 811 pages; Pounds 20 WHOEVER chose the jacket illustration for Ben Pimlott's superb new biography of Harold (now Lord) Wilson chose well. The former British prime minister is shown lighting his pipe. He says nothing. His...

* Lives of former prime ministers have lost, if the biographer is wise, their triumphal quality. Horn's Macmillan tried to keep up its cheerfulness and paid the penalty in credibility. Whoever takes up the grievous history of Margaret Thatcher will have to follow...

David Miliband, Britain's new foreign secretary, became the first British Cabinet minister to post a blog last year _ though his entries are often thick with technical jargon.A technology buff, he also has an avatar in Second Life _ an online world rarely inhabited by...

Lyndon B. Johnson showed his intensity over Vietnam War negotiations and calculated the public response to his nomination of the first black justice for the Supreme Court in 1967 telephone recordings released Tuesday.The late president's rough demeanor and sometimes salty language emerge in the conversations...