Patriot and appeaser

Since appeasement is in the air again, this is a timely book. It tells the story of how Lord Londonderry, secretary of state for air in the National government of 1931-5, sought to avert what would be the second world war by befriending the Nazi leaders.

Londonderry, 7th Marquis and directly descended from Lord Castlereagh of the conference of Vienna, was one of the grandest and richest men in Britain. He owned several country houses, London-derry House in Park Lane and 50,000 acres in Ireland and England, including large parts of the Durham coalfields. He was educated at Eton and Sandhurst and commissioned into the Blues, which he commanded during the battle of Arras in 1917. In 1901 he had married Edie, daughter of Lord Chaplin, a beauty of commanding personality who become the mainstay of his life. Both were prodigious writers and hoarders of letters and it is the archive of their correspondence that Professor Sir Ian Kershaw has largely used to write the history of their relationship with Hitler, Goering, Ribbentrop and others in the Nazi high command in the years before 1939.