AS SEEN ON TV: LORD BEAVERBROOK

LORD BEAVERBROOK

AS SEEN IN:
'Edward & Mrs. Simpson'

AS PLAYED BY:
Ed Devereaux

From Wikipedia:
William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, Bt, PC, (25 May 1879 – 9 June 1964) was a Canadian-British business tycoon, politician, and writer.

The year he moved to England, Aitken became Liberal Unionist Member of Parliament for Ashton-under-Lyne. Aitken began to build a London newspaper empire. He often worked closely with Andrew Bonar Law, another native of New Brunswick, who became the only Canadian to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In 1911, he was knighted by King George V.

Adding to his chain of newspapers, which included the London Evening Standard, he bought a controlling interest in the failing Daily Express from Lawson Johnson on 14 November 1916 for £17,500. He was granted a peerage in 1917 as the 1st Baron Beaverbrook, the name "Beaverbrook" being adopted from a small community near his boyhood home. The name "Beaverbrook" had the advantage of conveying a distinctive Canadian ring to the title.

In 1918 he became the first Minister of Information. He became responsible for allied propaganda in allied and neutral countries. He would become known by some historians as the first baron of "Fleet Street" and as one of the most powerful men in Britain whose newspapers could make or break almost anyone.

In the 1930s, while personally attempting to dissuade King Edward VIII from continuing his potentially ruinous affair with American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, Lord Beaverbrook's newspapers published every tidbit of the affair, especially allegations about pro-Nazi sympathies.

BCnU!

(A few days late to remember his birthday.....)