Neville Chamberlain

Neville Chamberlain has gone down in the popular imagination as one of the guilty men, culpable for exposing his country to the costs and humiliation of near-defeat. Yet for most of his life Chamberlain enjoyed a very favourable reputation; appeasement and even Munich won widespread popular support. Once war was declared, he was seen as a competent war leader, at least until March/April 1940. In this work David Dutton looks at the ways in which vilification of Neville Chamberlain developed after his fall from power, and examines historians' recent attempts at rehabilitation. The result is a study of the ebb and flow of the reputation of one of the 20th-century's most controversial politicians, posing questions not only about his conduct and the circumstances of his time, but also about the nature and uses of the historical evidence itself.