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who had secretly subsidised the prewar political career of Sir Samuel Hoare, most egregious of Chamberlain’s ministers. In January 1940, Beaverbrook addressed the Duke of Windsor—the former King Edward VIII—about a possible peace offer to Germany. On May 6, he asserted in his own Daily Express that London would not be bombed, and that the Germans would not attack the Maginot Line. Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess later told the press baron: “Hitler likes you very much.” It was once said of Beaverbrook’s newspapers that they never espoused a cause which was both honourable and successful. The king opposed his inclusion in the Cabinet, but among all men Churchill chose this old colleague from the 1917–18 Lloyd George government as his luncheon companion on May 10, 1940.

Beaverbrook cast a spell over Churchill which remained unbroken by his old friend’s petulance, disloyalty and outrageous mischief-making. The Canadian-born magnate’s command of wealth, such as the prime minister himself had always craved, impressed him almost mystically. Churchill recognised in “dear Max” a fellow original, full of impish fun which was scantily available in Downing Street that summer. It is often remarked that Churchill had acolytes, but few intimates. More than any other person save his wife, Beaverbrook eased the loneliness of the prime minister’s predicament and responsibilities. Churchill’s belief in his old comrade’s fitness for government was excessive. But who among Beaverbrook’s Cabinet colleagues was more blessed with dynamism and decision, such as seemed vital to meet the challenges of 1940?

Daily pressures upon the prime minister were unrelenting. The War Cabinet met 108 times in the ninety-two days between May 10 and July 31. His black dispatch box contained a pile of papers which seemed never to diminish, “a farrago of operational155, civil, political and scientific matters.” Overriding War Office objections, he promoted Maj. Millis Jefferis, a clever soldier engaged in weapons experimental work, and ordered that he should report directly to Lindemann at the Cabinet Office. He insisted that the maverick armoured enthusiast Maj. Gen. Percy Hobart should be given suitable employment, overruling Dill’s objections with the assertion that he should remember that not only good boys help to win wars: “It is the sneaks and stinkers156 as well.” He harassed the service chiefs in support of one of “the Prof’s” most foolish personal initiatives, aerial rocket deployments against enemy aircraft. Sir Hugh Dowding of Fighter Command wanted his pilots to kill German aircrew who took to their parachutes. Churchill, recoiling from what he perceived as dishonourable conduct, would have none of this. Travelling with Roger Keyes at the end of July, he told the admiral that he had “many detractors” as chief of combined operations. Keyes responded tartly, “So had you, but you are now there in spite of it.” Churchill said, “There are no competitors for my job now—I didn’t get it until they had got into a mess.”

Beyond pressing the urgency of fighter production, Churchill made few tactical interventions in the Battle of Britain, but one of the most justly celebrated took place in the Downing Street Cabinet Room on June 21. There was fierce controversy between Lindemann and Sir Henry Tizard, chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee, about a suggestion from air intelligence that the Luftwaffe intended to use electronic beams to guide its night raiders to British targets. Tizard dismissed the feasibility of such a technique. Churchill summoned him, together with Lindemann and senior airmen, to a meeting attended by the twenty-eight-year-old scientific intelligence officer R. V. Jones. It soon became obvious that Jones alone understood the issue. Though awed by finding himself in such company, he said to the prime minister, “Would it help, sir, if I told you the story right from the start?” Churchill was initially taken aback, then said, “Well, yes, it would!” Jones spent twenty minutes157 explaining how his own researches, aided by “Ultra”—German signals