On 12 December, the British Ambassador to the United States, Lord Lothian, died suddenly. Churchill had already made some changes to the war cabinet by bringing in Sir John Anderson, Lord Beaverbrook, Ernest Bevin and Sir Kingsley Wood. He now decided to remove Halifax and appointed Anthony Eden to replace him as Foreign Secretary. Halifax was offered the Washington placement which he was obliged, in the circumstances, to accept. He held the role until 1 May 1946. Jenkins says he was successful, after a hesitant start. Jenkins concludes his coverage of the cabinet crisis with reference to Churchill's memoirs, written in 1948, in which he "breathtakingly" declared that the question of whether to fight on or not "never found a place in the war cabinet agenda".