Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook

It was as simple as that.

Well, that's what Northcliffe and Beaverbrook, you know, they helped... bring down Asquith and replace him with Lloyd George.

And then when Lloyd George didn't reward them suitably, then they turned on him.

That was the sort of thing at the time, this sense of entitlement that you could just...

Like this is a guy that's going places.

So even though he probably went in with this sort of sense of, oh, I have to start from the ground floor out here rather than at home, there was clearly something, especially in the young age, really compelling about him because people who don't have to pay much attention to him very quickly think, I want to put some money where you are because I think that I'm going to make money back on the basis He does sort of finish off his degree, like I said, third class.

He goes to write for Beaverbrook, another of the great press barons, at the Daily Express.

The Daily Express then, a very impressive agenda-setting newspaper, nothing like what it is now.

And that was a bit of an impediment.

Secondly, I realized I possibly had the wrong personality, assuming that I would, like Lord Beaverbrook, go to Britain, as so many colonials did.

They all prospered in journalism.

It was a well-known path.

But when Neville Chamberlain decided to resign as Prime Minister in 1940, it was far from certain that Churchill would take over.

To quote the press baron Lord Beaverbrook, Chamberlain wanted Lord Halifax, Labour wanted Halifax, the Lords wanted Halifax, the King wanted Halifax.

And on 9th May 1940, Neville Chamberlain held a meeting at 10 Downing Street with Lord Halifax and Winston Churchill to press that case.

Turning to Churchill, he asked whether Winston could see any reasons why, in these times, a member of the House of Lords should not be Prime Minister? Churchill realised that either agreeing or disagreeing was a trap.

Yeah, you gotta do what you gotta do is, is what this is all about.

Twenty-second of September, Lord Beaverbrook, the press baron, also the Minister of, um, of, of Aircraft Production.

You know, he's Minister of Production by this point.

Yeah.

There thus remained the work against Turkey and Bulgaria.

By arrangement between Lord Northcliffe and Lord Beaverbrook, propaganda against Turkey was ably conducted by the Near East section of the Ministry of Information, in charge of Mr. now Sir Hugo Cunliffe Owen.

This was obviously wise in the interests of economy and efficiency.

Propaganda in Bulgaria, however, was directed from Crewe House.

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Most valuable assistance was readily given to Crew House by the Ministry of Information, so efficiently organized by Lord Beaverbrook.

Close consultation was maintained between heads of sections of the two departments wherever cooperation could be advantageous.

Oh, yeah, sir.

Yeah, sir, he done buttled and valeted for a lot of the big people, the Duke of Wales, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Cedric Harewick and all them big people.

[laughs]

Uh, ain't that right, Reginald?

Bracken was now the terrier at bulldog Churchill's kennel door.

Brendan Bracken, along with Lord Beaverbrook, now the Minister of Aircraft Production, were the men who saw Churchill after midnight, the close advisors and friends who supported Churchill day and night.

But the defining moment in the Bracken-Churchill relationship came in 1940.

Britain's war was not going well.

Churchill found himself once again nearly destitute.

Lord Beaverbrook, who was kind of Churchill's last remaining, you know, patron in the newspaper, in the publication business, you know, who wasn't quite literally, you know, paying out to him for charity like the focus was in order to corral him into, you know, being the frontman of their position.

Beaverbrook simply got sick of his warmongering.

And Beaverbrook, among other publications, ran the Evening Standard.

He banned Churchill's content, canceled his contract, you know, deprived him, among other things, of substantial income.

And who Churchill found himself in such dire straits that his family's ancestral estate at Chartwell was literally listed for sale.

You know, as, uh, as 1938 became, uh, 1939, you know, he started saying like, "Look, you know, like Chamberlain, uh, Chamberlain took a knee because Chamberlain's weak, you know? And he, he's not a man who can stand up to, who can stand up to the Nazi threat," you know? And, and Churchill literally said in 1939 springtime, you know, on the floor of Parliament, you know, he said, you know, "The Nazi threat is, is, is represents a, a mortal danger to our 'freedom and peace.'" You know, that's him literally invoking, you know, the phraseology of Frankfurter and FDR, you know, which is interesting.

And you gotta, you gotta keep in mind, in these days, you know, we're talking about 1939.

Over the course of the Laurier boom, multiple Canadian industries underwent serious bouts of consolidation, as small and medium-sized companies merged into nationally dominant powerhouses.

We saw those developments through the eyes of Max Aitken, the master of mergers and acquisitions.

From cement to steel to utilities, Aitken made a fortune by creating behemoths that sat astride the Canadian economy, crushing smaller rivals through the power of economies of scale and close ties to government officials.

However, there were some drawbacks to being a consolidated firm that dominated a single industry.