Neville Chamberlain

Neville Chamberlain was the British prime minister from 1937 to 1940. He is chiefly remembered for the policy of appeasement and the Munich Agreement, but he also oversaw rearmament and led Britain into war after Germany invaded Poland.

Neville Chamberlain also held the offices or ranks of Lord President of the Council, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Leader of the Conservative Party. Neville Chamberlain was born in Birmingham and died in Reading.

David Boyle’s Munich 1938 reconstructs Neville Chamberlain’s repeated negotiations with Hitler and the cabinet calculations that produced the Munich Agreement. Robert Harris’ Munich places Chamberlain inside the conference through the viewpoint of a British civil servant, making the prime minister’s effort to prevent immediate war central to the thriller. Hilary Green’s Now Is the Hour shows ordinary British lives being reshaped by the policy choices and public uncertainty of the Chamberlain government as war approaches. Michael Ridpath’s Shadows of War and Traitor’s Gate use the arguments over appeasement, rearmament and resistance to Hitler to place Chamberlain at the political centre of conspiracies and divided loyalties before 1939.