Lord Beaverbrook

Press baron, entrepreneur, art collector, and wartime minister in Churchill's cabinet, Max Aitken was a colonial Canadian extraordinaire. Rising from a hardscrabble childhood in New Brunswick, he became a millionaire at age 25, earned the title of Lord Beaverbrook at 38, and by age 40 was the most influential newspaperman in the world. Fiercely loyal to the British Empire, he was nonetheless patronized by London's upper class, whose country he worked tirelessly to protect during World War II. David Adams Richards, one of Canada's preeminent novelists, celebrates Beaverbrook's heroic…