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 his early political efforts: Aitken continued to grow his business interests while in Parliament and also began to build a British newspaper empire. After the death of Charles Rolls in 1910, Aitken bought his shares in Rolls-Royce Limited, and over the next two years gradually increased his holding in the company. However, Claude Johnson, Rolls-Royce's Commercial managing director, resisted Aitken's attempt to gain control of the company, and in October 1913 he sold his holding to James Buchanan Duke, of the American Tobacco Company. In January 1911, Aitken, secretly, invested £25,000 in the failing "Daily Express". An attempt to buy