Lord Beaverbrook appointed by Churchill Minister for Aircraft Production on May 10th and a few weeks later given a seat in the War Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio, was born (William Maxwell Aitken) in Newcastle, New Brunswick, Canada, in 1879, the son of a Scottish minister. He made his first fortune in Canada, in cement, but came to England before the Great War, and in 1910 secured a seat in the House of Commons as Unionist M.P for Ashton-under-Lyne. The next year he was knighted and in 1917 was raised to the peerage. In 1918 Loyd George appointed him Minister of Information. By now he had secured control of the "Daily Express" and made it and the "Sunday Express" a power in the land. All through his public life he had been most keenly interested in the progress of flying, and in the development of the economic resources of Britain and of the British Commonwealth.
