Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook

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Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook : biography

25 May 1879 – 9 June 1964

As a young man, Aitken made his way to Halifax, Nova Scotia where John F. Stairs, part of the city’s dominant business family, gave him employment, training him in the business of finance. In 1904, when Stairs opened his newly formed Royal Securities Corporation, Aitken became a minority shareholder and the firm’s general manager. Under the tutelage of Stairs, who would be his mentor and friend, Aitken engineered a number of successful business deals and was planning to do a series of bank mergers; however, Stairs’ unexpected early death in late September 1904 led to Aitken acquiring control of the company. Stairs had given the untested and untrained Aitken an opportunity in business, just as Aitken would later do when he hired A.J. Nesbitt, a young dry goods salesman from Saint John, New Brunswick. Because Montreal, Quebec was, at that time, the financial centre of Canada, Aitken would send Nesbitt to open the Montreal branch of Royal Securities.

In 1909 under the umbrella of his Royal Securities Company, Aitken founded Calgary Power Company, Limited (now formally TransAlta Corporation). As the company’s first president, Aitken concentrated early efforts on the development of the Horseshoe Falls hydro station.

Published works by Lord Beaverbrook

  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook.The Abdication of Edward VIII. 1966.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. Canada in Flanders London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1917, First edition, 1916.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. Courage, The Story of Sir James Dunn. Brunswick Press, First edition, 1961.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. The Decline and Fall of Lloyd George. Greenwood Press, 1981, First edition, 1962. ISBN 978-0-313-23007-3.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. The Divine Propagandist. 1962.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. Don’t Trust to Luck. London: London Express Newspaper.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. Friends: Sixty years of Intimate personal relations with Richard Bedford Bennett. 1959.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. Men and Power, 1917–1918. North Haven, Connecticut: The Shoe String Press, Inc, 1956.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. My Early Life. Fredericton, New Brunswick: Atlantic Advocate Book, 1962.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. Politicians and the Press. 1925.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. Politicians and the War, Vol. 1. London: Oldbourne, 1928.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. Politicians and the War, Vol. 2. London: Oldbourne, 1932.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. Spirit of the Soviet Union. London: The Pilot Press, 1942.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. The Resources of The British Empire.London: Lane Publications, 1934.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. Success. Kessinger Publishing, 2003. ISBN 978-0-7661-5409-4. Originally published by Small, Maynard and Company, Inc, 1922.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. The Three Keys to Success. London: Hawthorn Books, 1956.
  • Aitken, Max, Lord Beaverbrook. Why Didn’t you Help the Finns? Are you in the Hands of the Jews? And 10 Questions, Answers. London: London Express, 1939.

In popular culture

For a period of time Beaverbrook employed novelist Evelyn Waugh in London and abroad. Waugh later lampooned his employer by portraying him as Lord Copper in Scoop and as Lord Monomark in both Put Out More Flags and Vile Bodies.

The Kinks recorded "Mr. Churchill Says" for their 1969 album Arthur, which contains the lines: "Mr. Beaverbrook says: ‘We’ve gotta save our tin/And all the garden gates and empty cans are gonna make us win…’."

Beaverbrook was one of eight notable Britons cited in Bjørge Lillelien’s famous "Your boys took a hell of a beating" commentary at the end of an English football team defeat to Norway in 1981, mentioned alongside British Prime Ministers Churchill, Thatcher and Attlee. BBC via ""Youtube. Retrieved: 13 March 2012.

In the alternate history novel, Dominion by C. J. Sansom, Beaverbrook served as Prime Minister from 1945 to 1953, heading a coalition government that consisted of the pro-Treaty factions of the Conservative Party and Labour Party, as well as the British Union of Fascists.Sansom, C.J. The Guardian, 19 October 2012.

In Jacqueline Winspear’s mystery series featuring Maisie Dobbs, Beaverbrook appears as the ruthless John Otterburn, press baron and Churchill’s minister of aviation, see Elegy for Eddie and Leaving Everything Most loved.