Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, PC, ONB (25 May 1879 – 9 June 1964) was a Canadian-British newspaper publisher and backstage politician who was an influential figure in British media and politics of the first half of the 20th century. His base of power was the largest circulation newspaper in the world, the "Daily Express", which appealed to the conservative working class with intensely patriotic news and editorials. During the Second World War he played a major role in mobilising industrial resources as Winston Churchill's minister of aircraft production. The young Max Aitken had
Baron Esmonde Baron Esmonde Baron Esmonde was a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created on 20 May 1632 for Sir Laurence Esmonde. He had earlier renounced the Roman Catholic faith. However, he married a Roman Catholic wife of the O'Flaherty family, by whom he had a son, Thomas. Fearing that her son would be raised a Protestant, Esmonde's wife ran away with their son and brought him up a strict Roman Catholic. In 1629, three years before his father's elevation to the peerage, Thomas was created a baronet, of Ballynastragh in the County of Wexford. However, as he was