Beaverbrook, Max (William Maxwell Aitken), 1st Baron 1879-1964
British newspaper magnate and politician

Born in Maple, Ontario, Canada, the son of a Presbyterian minister, he was educated in Newcastle, New Brunswick. He was a stockbroker in 1907 and by 1910 had made a fortune out of the amalgamation of Canadian cement mills. He went to Great Britain in 1910, entered parliament (1911-16), and became private secretary to Bonar Law. He was an observer at the Western Front early in World War I and wrote Canada in Flanders (1917). When Lloyd George became premier, he was made Minister of Information (1918). In 1919 he plunged into journalism and took Fleet Street by storm by taking over the Daily Express and making it into the most widely read daily newspaper in the world. He founded the Sunday Express (1921) and bought the Evening Standard (1929). The 'Beaverbrook press' fully expressed the ebullient, relentless, and crusading personality of its owner. In World War II Churchill successfully harnessed Beaverbrook's dynamic administrative powers to the production of much-needed aircraft. He was made Minister of Supply (1941-42), Lord Privy Seal, and lend-lease administrator in the USA. He became Chancellor of the University of New Brunswick in 1947. He wrote Politicians and the Press (1925), Politicians and the War (1928-32), Men and Power (new edn 1956), and The Decline and Fall of Lloyd George (1963).

Bibliography: A J P Taylor, Beaverbrook (1956)