Charles Frederick Gurney Masterman PC (24 October 1873 – 17 November 1927) was a British radical Liberal Party politician, intellectual and man of letters. He worked closely with such Liberal leaders as David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in designing social welfare projects, including the National Insurance Act 1911. During the First World War he played a central role in the main government propaganda agency. Early life Masterman was the third son of Thomas William Masterman of Rotherfield Hall in Sussex. His older brothers were the future natural historian Arthur Masterman and the future bishop Howard Masterman. On his mother’s side, Masterman was a grandson of William Brodie Gurney and a distant relation of Elizabeth Fry. He was educated at Weymouth College and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Union, and joint Secretary of the Cambridge University Liberal Club from 1895 to 1896. At the university, he had two primary interests: social reform (influenced by Christian Socialism) and literature. His first published work was From the Abyss, a collection of articles he had written anonymously while living in the slums of south east London. These were highly impressionistic pieces and reflected his literary leanings. Following this, Masterman became a journalist and co-edited the English Review with Ford Madox Ford. In February 1900 he was elected a junior Fellow of Christ's College. In 1901, he edited a collection of essays by eminent people of the day, entitled The Heart of the Empire: a discussion of Problems of Modern City Life in England. In 1905 he published In Peril of Change, a collection of his own essays. He also wrote a biography of the Reverend F. D. Maurice (Frederick Denison Maurice), published in 1907. In the years up to 1906, he established many of the literary friendships that would be important in his later role as head of British propaganda in the First World War. Political career Masterman was an unsuccessful candidate at the 1903 Dulwich by-election, but in the Liberal Party landslide victory at the general election of 1906, he was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for West Ham North. In 1909, he published his best known book, The Condition of England, a survey of contemporary society with particular focus on the state of the working class. Masterman worked closely with Liberal leaders Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George on the People's Budget of 1909. By 1911,