Mea Culpa: Liz Truss adds to the list of forgotten prime ministers

Questions of language and style in last week’s Independent, reviewed by John Rentoul

Double trouble: former PM Bonar Law’s surname caught us out (PA)

We mentioned Bonar Law a couple of times in the past week, because he was the third-shortest-serving prime minister until Liz Truss pushed him into fourth place. He was in office for 211 days in 1922, before retiring because of illness. He is one of several contenders for the title of the forgotten prime minister, which is more often applied to Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal prime minister who served for a little more than two years, from 1905-08.

Poor Law is so forgotten that few people know his name. We called him Andrew Bonar Law: that was his full name, but it is often assumed that Andrew was his given name and Bonar Law his surname, unhyphenated on the model of Sir Iain Duncan Smith (who used to be Mr Duncan Smith before he was knighted).

But Bonar, pronounced Bonner, was the prime minister’s given name, and Law his surname. It doesn’t help that Bonar is now extinct as a first name, although I don’t think it was ever common, so it is understandable that people assume it must be a surname.