LORD HALIFAX BECAME PRIME MINISTER?

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR JOE MAIOLO

Professor Joe Maiolo is a historian of International Politics at King’s College London. He is the author of Cry Havoc: The Arms Race and the Second World War, 1931-41 and is currently completing a book on the war’s origins for Cambridge University Press.

Unlike any other British prime minister, Winston Churchill’s wartime premiership is legendary and he himself has become an almost mythical figure. It may come as some surprise, then, that Churchill was not the first choice to be Neville Chamberlain’s successor when he resigned in May 1940. The favourite was Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, more commonly known as Lord Halifax. Wood was a key figure during the late 1930s as Britain geared up for war with Nazi Germany. Often considered one of the architects of appeasement, this has made historians wonder as to what could have happened had it been Halifax in 10 Downing Street and not the British Bulldog himself, Churchill. Here, historian Joe Maiolo discusses