Prime Ministers are asked about in British quizzes more than any other
political subject, and they are almost perfectly learnable: there have been
fewer than sixty, each with a party, a set of dates, and — for perhaps twenty of
them — a distinguishing fact that is the actual question.
Learn them as triples
The standard question shape is name, party, years — and it is asked in every
direction. "Who was PM in 1957?" and "when was Macmillan PM?" are the same fact
approached from two sides, and knowing it one way round does not reliably give
you the other. Learn the three together.
The twentieth century is asked about far more than the eighteenth and
nineteenth, but the earlier ones supply the record questions, which are a
category of their own: the youngest (Pitt the Younger), the longest-serving
(Walpole, and Walpole is also the first), the shortest, the only one
assassinated (Spencer Perceval), the only one to serve non-consecutive terms
more than once, and the ones who served under more than one monarch.
The facts that get asked
Beyond the dates, the recurring set is small: who won the Nobel Prize in
Literature, who was the first woman, who was the youngest of the modern era, who
resigned and why, and which PMs also held another great office first. Churchill
supplies more questions than anyone else and is worth knowing in unusual
detail — including the Nobel, which is the one that catches people, because they
assume it was the Peace Prize.
The episodes attached to particular premierships are asked at least as often
as the premierships themselves, and they identify their own PM, which makes them
worth twice what they look like:
Dunkirk and
the Suez crisis are the two most
frequently used,
the Berlin airlift and
the partition of India both fall
in Attlee's term, and
the South Sea Bubble is the
scandal that made Walpole.
The parallel American topic is
US Presidents, which British
quizzes ask about less often but not rarely; monarchs are
here.
Which PM won the Nobel Prize in Literature?
Answer Winston Churchill (1953)
First female PM?
Answer Margaret Thatcher (1979)
Which PM presided over the Good Friday Agreement of 1998?
Answer Tony Blair (1997-2007)
The Munich Agreement / 'peace for our time' PM?
Answer Neville Chamberlain (1938)
Which PM was brought down by the Winter of Discontent (1978-1979)?
Answer James Callaghan (1976-1979)
Who is the first sitting PM to have been found to have broken the law?
Answer Boris Johnson
Who succeeded Thatcher?
Answer John Major (1990)
Who was UK Prime Minister (Labour), 2007–2010?
Answer Gordon Brown
Only PM to be assassinated?
Answer Spencer Perceval (1812)
Who was UK Prime Minister (Conservative), 2010–2016?
Answer David Cameron
Who was UK Prime Minister (Conservative), 2016–2019?
Answer Theresa May
Who won the Battle of Waterloo, to become PM?
Answer Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
First British Prime Minister (by convention)?
Answer Robert Walpole (1721)
PM during the Suez Crisis?
Answer Anthony Eden (1956)
Which PM dominated the inter-war years?
Answer Stanley Baldwin (1923-24,24-29, 35-37)
Which two PMs served intermittently between 1923-1937?
Answer Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald
The 'Winds of Change' speech PM?
Answer Harold Macmillan (1960)
Who bought Egypt's Suez Canal shares in 1875 and made Queen Victoria the Empress of India in 1876?
Answer Benjamin Disraeli
Which PM founded the NHS and nationalised major industries?
Answer Clement Attlee (1945-51)
Clement Attlee — party and years as PM?
Answer Labour, 1945–1951
Liz Truss — party and years as PM?
Answer Conservative, 2022
Which PM founded the Open university?
Answer Harold Wilson (1964-70, 74-76)
Who repealed the Corn Laws in 1846?
Answer Robert Peel
Which PM took the UK into the EEC (1973)?
Answer Edward Heath (1970-1974)
Shortest-serving PM?
Answer Liz Truss (49 days, 2022)
Who was UK Prime Minister (Conservative), 1963–1964?
Answer Sir Alec Douglas-Home
Who was UK Prime Minister (Labour), expected from 20 July 2026?
Answer Andy Burnham
Which prime minister is known as the 'Welsh Wizard'?
Answer David Lloyd George (1916-1922)
Who was UK Prime Minister (Conservative), 1902–1905?
Answer Arthur Balfour
Youngest PM?
Answer William Pitt the Younger (24, in 1783)