BRITISH POLITICAL PERSONALITIES 1936-1945 (HU 3207) Catalogue number: HU 3207 Members of Churchill's Defence Committee in the garden of 10 Downing Street. Seen in the back row from left to right are: Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff; Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff; Sir Archibald Sinclair, Secretary of State for Air; David Margesson, Secretary of State for War; General Sir John Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff; Major General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff to the Minister of Defence and Deputy Secretary (Military) to the War Cabinet; Colonel Leslie Hollis, Senior Assistant Secretary (Military) to the War Cabinet and Secretary to the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Those in the front row, from right to left are: Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Aircraft Production; Clement Attlee, Lord Privy Seal; Winston Churchill, Prime Minister and Minister of Defence; Anthony Eden Foreign Secretary; and A V Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty.
Some famous faces in these photographs....all interesting to study individually and for their function during the wartime coalition cabinet. Interestingly, I note in the first photograph L (Leo) S Amery, Secretary of State for India,father of Julian a leading postwar Conservative Party politician but also the father of John Amery,his eldest son.John Amery had prewar, what you might refer to as fascist sympathies and took these with him when he decided to travel in Europe and settle in France Living under Vichy rule,he came under the notice of the Germans with his pro Third Reich sympathies which he expressed as being anti Bolshevik and was allowed to live in Germany.He collaborated with the Germans by broadcasting propaganda to his homeland and featured in the formation and the attempt to recruit British POWs into what became the British Free Corps. After the war he had to face justice and was found guilty of treason and executed in December 1945.
