Neville Chamberlain
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British politician of the Conservative Party. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasement, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938. He resigned the premiership because the Labour and Liberal parties would not serve under his leadership. He was succeeded by his colleague Winston Churchill.
About Neville Chamberlain in brief
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British politician of the Conservative Party. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasement, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938. He resigned the premiership because the Labour and Liberal parties would not serve under his leadership. He was succeeded as prime minister by his colleague Winston Churchill. Chamberlain died aged 71 on 9 November 1940 of cancer. His reputation remains controversial among historians, the initial high regard for him being entirely eroded by books such as Guilty Men, which blamed Chamberlain and his associates for the Munich accord and for allegedly failing to prepare the country for war. His actions at Munich were widely popular among the British at the time, and his actions towards an increasingly aggressive Germany were popular with the British public. Chamberlain was the only son of the second marriage of Joseph Chamberlain, who later became Mayor of Birmingham and a Cabinet minister. His mother was Florence Kenrick, cousin to William Kenrick MP; she died when he was a small boy. Joseph Chamberlain had had another son, Austen Chamberlain, by his first marriage. Neville Chamberlain was educated at home by his elder sister Beatrice Chamberlain and later at Rugby School. His father sent his younger son to establish a sisal plantation on Andros Island in the Bahamas, but the plantation was a failure and Neville Chamberlain lost £50,000. On his return to England, he entered business, purchasing Hoskins & Company, a manufacturer of metal ship berths.
At forty, he fell in love with Anne Cole, a recent marriage, and married her in 1910. He became a founding member of the national United Hospitals Committee of the British Medical Association in 1910, following the death of his first wife, Anne Cole. In 1906, he became a Governor of Birmingham’s General Hospital, along with more than fifteen other dignitaries, including Queen Elizabeth II. In 1913, he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in the National Government in 1931. In 1923 he was rapidly promoted in 1923 to Minister of Health and thenChancellor of the exchequer. After a short-lived Labour-led government, he returned as Minister of health, introducing a range of reform measures from 1924 to 1929. In 1929 he became Prime Minister, leading the UK through the first eight months of the war until his resignation on 10 May 1940, when he became Lord President of the Council. He pledged Great Britain to defend Poland’s independence if the latter were attacked, an alliance that brought his country into war after the German invasion of Poland. The failure of Allied forces to prevent the German invade of Norway caused the House of Commons to hold the historic Norway Debate in May 1940; Chamberlain’s conduct of the War was heavily criticised by members of all parties. Until ill health forced him to resign on 22 September 1940, Chamberlain was an important member of The Council, heading the government in Churchill’s absence.
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