Blazon of the shield of arms: Argent two barrulets wavy azure between in chief two maple leaves slipped and in base a thistle eradicated gules a bordure sable charged with eight bezants.
William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook PC, ONB generally known as Lord Beaverbrook and (“Max” to his close circle), was born on 25 May 1879 in Maple, Ontario, Canada.
He was a Canadian-British newspaper publisher and backstage politician who was an influential figure in British media and politics of the first half of the 20th century. Aitken received a peerage on 23 January 1917 as the 1st Baron Beaverbrook.
His base of power was the largest circulation newspaper in the world, the Daily Express, which appealed to the conservative working class with intensely patriotic news and editorials. During the Second World War, he played a major role in mobilizing industrial resources as Winston Churchill’s Minister of Aircraft Production.
He died on 9 June 1964 age 85.
The peerage survives in the person of the 3rd Baron Beaverbrook, Maxwell William Humphrey Aitken.
The artwork is an interpretation of John Hamilton Gaylor
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