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Routledge Historical Biographies
Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain, the Conservative Prime Minister who pursued the doomed policy of appeasing Hitler, is one of the most reinterpreted of modern British Prime Ministers. Infamous on account of his declaration of having achieved ‘peace for our time’, Neville Chamberlain has often been portrayed as a social reformer out of sync with the times in which he lived. In this new biography, Nick Smart offers a picture conditioned more by the opinions of contemporaries than by hindsight, examining Chamberlain's life, career, achievements and failures. Stressing that the system in which Chamberlain found himself operating had more impact on the historical developments than anything he did personally, Smart describes a man who was hardworking but ultimately out of his depth, destined to be remembered in history as the fall-guy to Winston Churchill’s hero. Presenting Chamberlain's life and politics in a nuanced way, Nick Smart's biography is a must read for anyone interested in British politics and its impact on the international stage.
- GenresHistory
328 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2009
About the author
Nick Smart
20 booksA graduate of the University of Reading, Dr. Nick Smart teaches at the School of Humanities and Performing Arts at the University of Plymouth.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 5, 2023
In assessing blame for the failure to confront Adolf Hitler in the years leading up to the outbreak of war in 1939, the umbrella-bearing figure of Neville Chamberlain has always been one of the main targets. Virtually from the moment of his resignation and succession by Winston Churchill Chamberlain became the target of considerable criticism for his efforts to appease Nazi Germany instead of challenging them. Yet over the years some biographers and historians have sought to qualify such damming judgments, usually by setting the failure within the context of a broader career of positive achievements, or presenting appeasement as a policy intended not as a permanent solution but as a way of buying time for Britain’s rearmament efforts.
Nick Smart is having none of this. His biography of Chamberlain offers a scathing assessment of its subject, one that portrays him throughout as a vain and narrow-minded man with an unjustifiably high regard for his own opinion. It’s a highly critical book that is entertainingly immoderate and even contrarian in its tone, challenging practically every previous attempt to rehabilitate his subject. This is evident from the very first pages, in which Smart dismisses the claims that the reserved attitude that Chamberlain developed at an early age hid any inner warmth. His Chamberlain is a cold fish, and one whose withdrawn nature hardened into impenetrability at an early age.
What spares Smart’s book from being an outright character assassination, though, is his willingness to spread the blame. Thus, the failure of the sisal-growing operation in the Bahamas, which consumed Chamberlain’s early years as an adult, is more due to his father Joseph’s and half-brother Austen’s ignorance of the field and overly optimistic assumptions about a crop the market for which was shortly to plunge. And while Chamberlain returned from it bitter about its failure, his subsequent successes in business are credited to his own diligence and work ethic. These traits become central to Chamberlain’s success in politics as well, albeit one that benefits initially from the entrée his family name gave him into Birmingham politics. His triumphs in interwar politics are thanks to a combination of hard work and a set of circumstances that enabled a rapid rise despite Chamberlain’s late entry into Parliament. In the end, however, Chamberlain's gifts did not extend to character judgment, and Smart makes a convincing case that his use of personal diplomacy, as anticipatory of future practice as it was, was based on a self-regard that deprived him of the support of the Foreign Office and the politicians who led it.
It did not help that Chamberlain’s personal diplomacy worked both ways, as Smart shows how contemporaries such as Adolf Hitler and Éamon de Valera quickly deduced that appealing to his vanity was the way to get what they wanted from him. That Smart provides evidence for this character trait early in his book is key to the persuasiveness of his arguments, as his description of Chamberlain's flawed character in the early chapters bears fruit when discussing his failings in the political arena. Occasionally the repetitiveness of Smart's negative description can be grating, especially as much of it relies on the author’s consistently negative interpretations of Chamberlain’s words in his private correspondence, many of the statements in which can certainly support other conclusions. Nevertheless, the unrestrained nature of Smart’s sharply-rendered judgments makes his book a lively and engaging study of one of the most controversial British prime ministers of the twentieth century, a man who deserves at least our understanding if not our sympathy.
Nick Smart is having none of this. His biography of Chamberlain offers a scathing assessment of its subject, one that portrays him throughout as a vain and narrow-minded man with an unjustifiably high regard for his own opinion. It’s a highly critical book that is entertainingly immoderate and even contrarian in its tone, challenging practically every previous attempt to rehabilitate his subject. This is evident from the very first pages, in which Smart dismisses the claims that the reserved attitude that Chamberlain developed at an early age hid any inner warmth. His Chamberlain is a cold fish, and one whose withdrawn nature hardened into impenetrability at an early age.
What spares Smart’s book from being an outright character assassination, though, is his willingness to spread the blame. Thus, the failure of the sisal-growing operation in the Bahamas, which consumed Chamberlain’s early years as an adult, is more due to his father Joseph’s and half-brother Austen’s ignorance of the field and overly optimistic assumptions about a crop the market for which was shortly to plunge. And while Chamberlain returned from it bitter about its failure, his subsequent successes in business are credited to his own diligence and work ethic. These traits become central to Chamberlain’s success in politics as well, albeit one that benefits initially from the entrée his family name gave him into Birmingham politics. His triumphs in interwar politics are thanks to a combination of hard work and a set of circumstances that enabled a rapid rise despite Chamberlain’s late entry into Parliament. In the end, however, Chamberlain's gifts did not extend to character judgment, and Smart makes a convincing case that his use of personal diplomacy, as anticipatory of future practice as it was, was based on a self-regard that deprived him of the support of the Foreign Office and the politicians who led it.
It did not help that Chamberlain’s personal diplomacy worked both ways, as Smart shows how contemporaries such as Adolf Hitler and Éamon de Valera quickly deduced that appealing to his vanity was the way to get what they wanted from him. That Smart provides evidence for this character trait early in his book is key to the persuasiveness of his arguments, as his description of Chamberlain's flawed character in the early chapters bears fruit when discussing his failings in the political arena. Occasionally the repetitiveness of Smart's negative description can be grating, especially as much of it relies on the author’s consistently negative interpretations of Chamberlain’s words in his private correspondence, many of the statements in which can certainly support other conclusions. Nevertheless, the unrestrained nature of Smart’s sharply-rendered judgments makes his book a lively and engaging study of one of the most controversial British prime ministers of the twentieth century, a man who deserves at least our understanding if not our sympathy.
October 21, 2012
I want to find a better biography of Chamberlain. I found it somewhat of a drudge to get through, and I didn't feel I learned as much about the man as I have from other books that did not focus on him.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews