THE CHURCHILL BEAVERBROOK LETTERS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31121, 26 July 1966, Page 11

THE CHURCHILL BEAVERBROOK LETTERS

stiff, imperious, and upstage reply:— “Dear Minister of Aircraft Production, “I have received your letter of June 30, and hasten to say that at a moment like this when an invasion is reported to be imminent there can be no question of any Ministerial resignations being accepted. “I require you, therefore, to dismiss this matter from your mind, and to continue the magnificent work you are doing, on which to a large extent our safety depends. “Meanwhile I am patiently studying how to meet your needs in respect of control of the over-lapping parts of your department and that of the Air Min-

the Air Ministry and the air marshals. He must take up where I lay down. “And, rest assured, I will not lay down until the new Minister reaches my offices, and then only when he had been properly informed of everything that is in hand. “Yours sincerely, Beaverbrook.”

Of course no new Minister arrived and of course he did not “lay down”—yet. But It was only the first of a number of resignations Beaverbrook handed in, exceeded perhaps in recent British political history only by those of Lord Robert Cecil early in the century.

Why? Certainly Beaverbrook often felt himself frustrated beyond bearing by what seemed to him the in-