Beaverbrook

A prodigious work of scholarship as well as a labor of love. Taylor's history of Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook whom Asquith once dubbed ""the little Canadian adventurer on the make"" spans some 50 years of British politics, the Depression and both Worm Wars. Beaverbrook -- financier, press lord, kingmaker, politician and historian -- is established beyond dispute as one of the dominant personages of 20th century British history. ""I did not make situations; I turned them to account,"" Beaverbrook once said of himself. It was this ability which earned him the reputation of unscrupulous, self-seeking opportunist -- a reputation which Taylor's biography refutes at every turn. Since 1967 when they were first opened to researchers, Taylor has acted as honorary director of the Beaverbrook Archives, the vast library of contemporary history which contains, aside from Beaverbrook's own lifelong records, the papers of Lloyd George and Bonar Law. Using this new material Taylor reassesses the role of Beaverbrook and Lloyd George in the momentous Cabinet crisis of 1916 which elevated the latter to premiership. With equal care Taylor pursues Beaverbrook's war propaganda at the Ministry of Information, his lasting fidelity to Empire Free Trade, and his crucial role as Minister of Aircraft Production and Churchill's intimate adviser in World War II. A Tory radical in the tradition of Joseph Chamberlain, Beaverbrook was a parvenu millionaire, a Canadian, and a singularly poor ""party man."" His position as constant outsider was thus assured: he turned it to advantage by becoming the arch conciliator, string-puller, and political go-between of his age. Luckily for Britain he was endowed with a virtually infallible instinct for bringing together the right combination of men in moments of national emergency, supporting them while the crisis lasted, then quickly retreating to guard his own position as backstage potentate. The temperamental affinities between Taylor and Beaverbrook -- both gadflies within the Establishment -- are intrinsic; in chronicling the incomparable career of Max, Taylor has abandoned his conventional posture of Olympian cynicism though not his sharp judgment. He has produced a complete vindication of the shadowy titan whom lesser historians have regarded with enmity and suspicion. Masterful.