Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940)

Born into a political family in 1869 (his father was a politician and his elder half-brother, Austen, was a Conservative who won the Nobel Prize for Peace) Chamberlain became a Member of Parliament in 1918 aged 49. He held many important government positions including Postmaster General and Chancellor of the Exchequer, before becoming Prime Minister in 1937.

Perhaps most associated with a policy of appeasement towards Hitler, Chamberlain was responsible for the Munich agreement, in which both Britain and France agreed to cede the Czech region of Sudetenland to the Germans. He famously hoped that this would ensure “peace for our time”.
As we know, this was not the case, and on September 3rd 1939 following Germany’s invasion of Poland with whom the British had a Mutual Protection Pact, Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany.
He held the post of Prime Minister for 3 years until ill health forced him to resign in 1940 and, though he was still given an important role in Winston Churchill’s war cabinet as Lord President of the Council, he died a few weeks after he left office, on 9th November 1940.