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Beaverbrook
Max Aitken
(1879–1964), later enobled as Lord Beaverbrook (a reward
for services rendered or simply to get him out of people's
hair) made a fortune in Canada before - like Roy Thomson
and Conrad Black - moving to the
UK. Throughout the twenties and thirties he conducted
quixotic political campaigns, subsequently serving as a
minister in Churchill's wartime government. His newspaper
empire has been dismantled; its chief monuments are the
Beaver's reputation and a modernist building (all art deco
chrome and black glass) in Fleet Street.
Beaverbrook Newspapers was sold to Trafalgar House
Investments (property and shipping) in 1977, being renamed
Express Newspapers. Five years late Trafalgar's media and
shipping interests were spun off, with Express as part of
Fleet Holdings, absorbed in October 1985 by regional
publisher United Newspapers. In 1996 United became part of
the MAI group, currently being dismantled.
At the end of 2000 most of the newspapers were acquired by
Britain's leading publisher of soft-core porn.
studies
AJP Taylor's
portrait of Beaverbrook (New York, Simon &
Schuster 72) - a sort of mirror image of Orson Welles's
love letter to William Randolph Hearst
- has become a classic. While criticised as too
close to his subject, Taylor's verve and intelligence mean
that he has not been superseded by more recent studies
such as Beaverbrook- A Life (London, Pimlico 93) by
Anne Chisholm & Michael Davie.
Beaverbrook's own writings, in particular Men &
Power 1917-19 (London, Hutchinson 56) - while examples
of 'faction' long before the New Journalism became popular
- are excellent entertainment.
Breakfast With Beaverbrook: Memoirs of an Independent
Woman (Sydney, Hale & Iremonger 95) by Anne Moyall
- former Beaverbrook aide, co-founder of the Australian
Dictionary of Biography and pioneering historian of
Australian science - is intimate, perceptive and charming. Logan
Gourlay edited The Beaverbrook I Knew (London,
Quartet 84), a set of reminiscences.
Tom Driberg's Beaverbrook: A Study in Power &
Frustration (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 56) is
another love letter by Beaverbrook journalist 'William
Hickey'. This Man Beaverbrook (40) by William
Brittain, Newspaper Lords in British Politics (58)
by Carl Hambro, Beaverbrook, "a difficult
fellow" - the Story of Beaverbrook at MAP (45)
and G, for God Almighty: a personal memoir of Lord
Beaverbrook (69) by David Farrer are of archival
interest only.
In contrast Gregory Marchildon's Profits and Politics:
Beaverbrook and the Gilded Age of Canadian Finance
(Toronto, Uni of Toronto Press 96) is more revealing about
the vagaries of turn of the century investment banking -
much like 1990s funding of dot coms - than Beaverbrook the
man.
The Fall of the House of Beaverbrook (79) by Lewis
Chester & Jonathan Fenby is a account of dismantling
the empire. Voice of Britain: The Inside Story of the
Daily Express (83) by Roger Allen is
self-congratulatory.
Richard Cockett edited My Dear Max: The Letters of
Brendan Bracken to Lord Beaverbrook 1925-58 (London,
Rainbow 90).
Beaverbrook's own writings - entertaining, invaluable but
not always reliable - include Success and Canada
In Flanders (22), Politicians & the War
1914–1916 (28), Men & Power: 1917–1918
(London, Hutchinson 56), My Early Life
(Fredericton, Brunswick Press 65), The Abdication of
Edward VIII (London, Hamish Hamilton 66), The
Decline & Fall of Lloyd George (London, Collins
66) and Friends (59).
He appears, thinly disguised in novels by his mistress
Rebecca West (Barbara Cartland was another friend), HG
Wells and Arnold Bennett.
biography
Son of a Presbyterian clergyman, Max Aitken grew up
near Beaverbrook, New Brunswick, and made a fortune
through corporate reorganisations before heading off to
England in 1910 when Canada became a bit unwelcoming. He
entered Parliament in alliance with Conservative
leader Andrew Bonar Law, acquiring national newspapers in
opposition to the Harmsworth family, notably the Pall
Mall Gazette, Daily Express and Evening
Standard. The Sunday Express was founded in
1918. After involvement in the downfall of Herbert Asquith
- his memoirs provide an insight into the elevation of
David Lloyd George as Prime Minister - he received a
peerage.
During the twenties and thirties he conducted political
crusades - frequently unclear where personal, party and
national interests stopped - and was a hands-on manager of
the papers. Hearst commented that Beaverbrook used tabloid
methods on broadsheets, with the result that by 1936 the Express
had the largest circulation in the world. Beaverbrook's
campaigns - for Edward VIII, imperial free trade - were
notably unsuccessful. He was prominent in Churchill’s
wartime government as Minister of Aircraft Production
(40–41), Minister of Supply (41–42), Minister of War
Production (Feb. 42), Special Envoy to the United States
on Supplies (42), and Lord Privy Seal (43–45).
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