Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook as his Minister of Aircraft Production from May 1940. Churchill and others later praised his Ministerial contributions. He resigned due to ill-health in 1941 but later in the war was appointed Lord Privy Seal. Beaverbrook spent his later life running his newspapers, which by then included the "Evening Standard" and the "Sunday Express". He served as Chancellor of the University of New Brunswick and developed a reputation as a historian with his books on political and military history. Aitken was born in Maple, Ontario, Canada, in 1879, one of the ten children of William Cuthbert Aitken, a Scottish-born Presbyterian minister
Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook to be mismanaging the war effort. Aitken's opinion of Asquith did not improve when he failed to get a post in the Cabinet reshuffle of May 1915. An attempt by Bonar Law to secure the KCMG for Aitken was also blocked by Asquith. Aitken was happy to play a small part, which he greatly exaggerated, as a go-between when Asquith was forced from office and replaced by David Lloyd George in December 1916. Lloyd George offered to appoint Aitken as President of the Board of Trade. At that time, an MP taking a cabinet post for the first time had