Duff Cooper

DUFF COOPER (1890-1954), the son of a doctor, went to Eton and Oxford and then entered the Foreign Office. He was released to join the army in 1917 and won the DSO for conspicuous bravery a year later. Entering Parliament in 1924, he later became Secretary of State for War and First Lord of the Admiralty, resigning over the Munich Agreement of 1938. In Churchill's wartime government in 1940 he had posts as Minister of Information, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and resident Cabinet Minister in Singapore. He was British representative in Algiers, liaising with De Gaulle, and a renowned British Ambassador in Paris from 1944-7. He wrote six books, including a classic biography of Talleyrand and an autobiography Old Men Forget. Operation Heartbreak (1950) was his only novel. He became 1st Viscount Norwich in 1951. His wife was the famous beauty Lady Diana Cooper; his son is the writer John Julius Norwich.