William Maxwell Aitken 1st Baron Beaverbrook, (William Maxwell ‘Max’ Aitken 1st Baron Beaverbrook) Biography

newspaper proprietor. Having made a fortune in his native Canada, he came to England in 1910 and began a career in politics, rising to the position of Lord Privy Seal in Churchill's wartime Cabinet in 1943. Raised to the peerage in 1916 Beaverbrook became the most powerful figure in popular journalism, acquiring the Daily Express, the Evening Standard, and the Sunday Express during the course of his energetic career. A champion of the British Empire, he used his papers to crusade for his own, often controversial, political causes. He wrote several books on politics and the First World War, including The Decline and Fall of Lloyd George (1963). Lord Ottercove, in the novels of Gerhardie, is modelled on Beaverbrook.