‍Clementine Churchill called him a “malevolent imp”. Lady Diana Cooper thought him “a strange attractive gnome with an odour of genius about him”. As for Beaverbrook himself, when he was asked if his Christian name of Max was short for Maximillian, he replied with his usual modesty: “No Maximultimillion”.

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‍Elsewhere in this fine organ you will find part of the great man’s rather fanciful recollections of his childhood in Canada, published in the Sunday Express after his death in 1964. ‘I was one of 10 children…doing without was the rule of family life’.

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‍This was the Beaver’s way of exaggerating his extraordinary achievements as if any flourishes were needed. He claimed he was from peasant farming stock: “I am descended from a long line of agricultural labourers going back to 1613, therefore I feel quite equal to the Cecil family except that none of my family stole from church funds”.

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‍In fact his grandfather was a Scottish tenant farmer and his father, the Rev William Aitken, had been to Edinburgh University. His mother, Jane Noble, was from a prosperous Canadian family.   

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‍Max was born in Maple, Ontario in 1879 and a year later the family moved to New Brunswick and a large manse, big enough for the vast Victorian family and their servants, and the first house in the area to have a telephone. It may not be Chatsworth or Chartwell but it is open to the public.

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‍Rags to riches? Not a bit of it, but it was all part of the Beaverbrook dictum to his editors: “Where’s the drama, we must have drama!”

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‍His life was full of it, a sterling millionaire before the age of 30, achieved by some questionable dealings apparently, a Liberal Unionist MP within months of arriving in Britain on the Lusitania in 1910. Knighted a year later, then made a baronet and finally ennobled as Lord Beaverbrook in 1917. He was a cabinet minister during WW1 serving as Minister of Information (for which read propaganda) and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

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‍By the age of 40 he had been created a peer and had been a cabinet minister during a world war, was the joint owner of Rolls-Royce (the company, not the car) and had bought the Daily Express (ditto).

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‍By any standards, here was a remarkable man. A born journalist in that he woke up every morning curious, wanting to know more and more and instructing his editors to satisfy that curiosity. And he collected women and houses simply because he could.

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‍He owned the vast Cherkley Court estate near Leatherhead, the Vineyard in Fulham, bought on a whim because it had a tennis court, Stornoway House in St James, complete with a grand ballroom and la Capponcina near Cap d’Ail where his greatest friend Churchill loved to paint.

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‍As for the women, he remained married from 1906 to army general’s daughter Gladys Drury until her death in 1927, installed his mistress Jean Norton at Cherkley and had countless casual affairs with a legion of women including Edwina Mountbatten, Tallulah Bankhead, my own heroine Toto Koopman (until — oops — she fell in love with the Beaver’s son Max). There were dozens more.

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‍Somehow he had time to entertain endlessly at Cherkley and his friends were a mix of politicians of all hues, writers and anyone who would entertain him. That was the priority, he had to be entertained. Hence regulars like Rudyard Kipling, Michael Foot, HG Wells, Arnold Bennett, the Irish nationalist Tim Healy and the Irish viscount Lord Castlerosse who wrote Londoner’s Log in the SX and was Max’s permanent hanger-on.

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‍How I wish I had worked for him rather than the pygmies who ran the Expresses into the ground after his death in 1964. Just a fortnight before he breathed his last he gave a brilliant and moving speech at his 85th birthday party at the Dorchester which is available to watch on YouTube.

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‍In a remarkably strong voice considering his nearness to the end, he talks of his life in this country as a series of apprenticeships, the first in politics and then in Fleet Street: “Oh that was a really exciting affair. Then the second world war, once again an apprentice to production, sustained by Churchill. Without his support I would have failed miserably. We were so ill-prepared, we faced peril beyond comprehension. He never wavered.”

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‍The Beaver, knowing his cancer would take him soon, ends his speech: “It’s time for me to be an apprentice once again…though I’m not set on which direction, but some time soon.”

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‍Beaverbrook was a giant as a maverick politician, as an instinctive newspaper man and as Winston Churchill’s most trusted, dearest friend and advisor.

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‍Without that pairing we might all have been born into a very different world.

‍*****

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‍My eccentric and brilliant friend Anthony Stileman has done it again. He has a new exhibition of his art currently at Gallery Different in Percy Street, Fitzrovia, focusing on his passion for English cricket and rugby with a nod to the Henley Regatta.

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‍He paints and sculpts sporting scenes in the style of the great artists and they are, in my 1964 A-level art opinion, quite perfect. Hence we have a pastiche of Warhol painting that selfish old bugger WG Grace entitled Icon (2) by WG Warhol and Death Row (so called after the reserved seats for us oldies in the Tavern Stand at Lord’s) and painted by Vincent van Tavern-Upper.

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‍Stileman is an MCC member and, lest you doubt it, he is fond of attending Tests in full regalia, the hat, tie, blazer, even the socks. As the first Test against New Zealand is almost upon us you might wish to get in the mood by popping into Gallery Different for something that really is just that.

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‍*****

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‍Did you read the story about Fatima Bio’s empty council house in Southwark? It’s rather different from the place she lives in a few thousand miles away in Freetown, Sierra Leone. I know because I visited the presidential compound during one of my charity trips to the country with Street Child.

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‍It was about 10 years ago and Madame Bio was not in residence; different times, different president, different First Lady. But you could not fail to notice that you are nearly there because the approach suddenly changes from a dirt road to tarmac.

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‍And it must be the only house in this poor city to be called a palace, have full air conditioning, a swimming pool, tennis court and a helipad.

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‍Yet Mrs Bio has been allowed to keep on her two-bed council flat in London. Sorry to come over all Robert Jenrick but,..

‍*****

‍AND FINALLY

‍May and June are birthday months in this house with seven in total. In my case I have a big one in four weeks when Geoffrey Levy and I intend to celebrate our joint 168th on the 22nd. Don’t be fooled, just because he still has a full head of dark tresses and mine is a tasteful white, I’m the baby.

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‍ALAN FRAME

‍27 May 2026