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NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN by Iain Macleod

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN

By

Pub Date: May 7th, 1962
Publisher: Atheneum

No doubt Neville Chamberlain will forever be remembered in the public mind as the man who came back from Munich with his rolled umbrella saying he believed there would be ""peace for our time"". Mr. Iain Macleod, a leading member of the present government and for the eventual succession to Mr. Macmillan, has apparently time to in his leisure hours, seeking not to whitewash Chamberlains, but to put him in a sympathetic light. In particular, judge Chamberlain in terms of his whole career, and not merely by its Chamberlain was a member of a famous northern Liberal-turned-Conservative family. Joseph Chamberlain was his father and Austen his half-brother. He was fifty before he entered parliament he had been successful in business and as Lord Mayor of Birmingham. His parliamentary rise was rapid: he was a reforming Minister of Health in the Ballwin government of the late twenties, later Party Chairman and Chancellor of the Becoming Prime Minister in 1937, he had never before had any concern with foreign affairs, but his of the quarrel with Elen which led to Eden's resignation as Foreign Secretary is presented here. What is very surprising and never really explained is that Chamberlain had long disliked and distrusted Germany -- and in some of his utterances was apparently aware of the sort of man Hitler was; yet he believed, apparently, that Hitler was rational and would keep the Munich pact. Chamberlain's letters to his sisters. Intimate accounts of his political affairs -- add to the interest of the book.