Leo Amery, the Last Imperialist
'A life of action and constant fidelity to a set of ideas': Max Beloff takes a fresh look at the career of Leo Amery with the publication of the latter's second volume of diaries – a man by no means the stereotype of an inter-war Conservative politician.
On the eve of his seventieth birthday, Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India and for Burma in Winston Churchill's wartime government, examined himself in his diary:
Whether any particular writing, action or speech of mine is likely to live is doubtful. But the sum total of my contribution in ideas and steadily following them up over a lifetime may in fact, if not in repute, have amounted to a good deal; and with that inner consciousness of impartiality I can afford to rest content.
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