In defence of Neville Chamberlain

Among the unorthodox enthusiasms of Lloyd George was an interest in phrenology, the pseudo-science that holds that an individual’s character can be revealed by the shape and size of the cranium. Of his first sighting of the rising politician Neville Chamberlain during the Great War, Lloyd George later wrote, ‘When I saw that pinhead, I said to myself, he won’t be of any use.’

That has tended to be the verdict of history. Few prime ministers have been more vilified than Chamberlain, who died from cancer on 9 November 1940, seven months after he had left Downing Street. His very name is synonymous with cowardice in the face of oppression. As the architect of the policy of appeasement, he is widely seen as the man who emboldened the Nazi regime and left our country ill-prepared for war. To his many critics, his disastrous strategy stemmed from a mix of self-righteous vanity and naive parochialism.