31 Facts About Brendan Bracken

Brendan Bracken is best remembered for supporting Winston Churchill during the Second World War.

Brendan Bracken was the founder of the modern version of the Financial Times.

Brendan Bracken was Minister of Information from 1941 to 1945.

Brendan Rendall Bracken was born in Templemore, County Tipperary, Ireland, the second son and third of the four children of Joseph Kevin Bracken, builder and monumental mason, and his second wife, Hannah Agnes Ryan.

Brendan Bracken's father had belonged to the IRB and was one of the seven founders of the GAA.

Widowed in 1904, Hannah Bracken had moved her family by 1908 to Dublin, where Brendan attended St Patrick's National School, Drumcondra, until 1910, when he was transferred to the O'Connell School, run by the Irish Christian Brothers.

Brendan Bracken then sent him to Australia to live with a cousin who was a priest in Echuca, Victoria.

In 1919, Bracken returned briefly to Ireland, finding his mother settled in County Meath.

Brendan Bracken distanced himself from Ireland as well as his siblings, who were in revolt over their father's inheritance.

Brendan Bracken might have had good reason to hide his Irish heritage, as the Irish War of Independence had aroused hostility toward Irish people living in Great Britain.

Brendan Bracken denied that, but Dalton insisted that he remembered the smell of Brendan Bracken's corduroy trousers.

Brendan Bracken then made a successful career from 1922 as a magazine publisher and newspaper editor in London.

Brendan Bracken assisted in Churchill's 1924 Westminster Abbey by-election campaign.

Brendan Bracken himself was elected to the House of Commons in 1929 as a Unionist for the London constituency of North Paddington.

Brendan Bracken needed politicians for stories and they needed the publicity his publications gave.

The Banker features a regular column called "Brendan Bracken", focusing on providing views and perspectives on how to improve the global financial system.

In two matters relating to Churchill, Brendan Bracken can be said to have played a key part behind the scenes.

When Brendan Bracken became aware of Churchill's agreement to nominate Halifax, he convinced Churchill that the Labour Party would indeed support him as Chamberlain's successor and Lord Halifax's appointment would hand certain victory to Hitler.

Brendan Bracken advised Churchill tactically to say nothing when the three met to arrange the succession.

When Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940, Brendan Bracken helped in moving him into 10 Downing Street.

Brendan Bracken was sworn into the Privy Council in 1940, despite his lack of ministerial experience, and became Churchill's parliamentary private secretary.

An insight into the nature of the relationship between Churchill and Brendan Bracken is found in Churchill's history of the Second World War.

The suggestion was that Churchill had arranged, as is diplomatic custom, for Hopkins to be met by the person who was his closest counterpart in British government and that Brendan Bracken often played the role of confidant and personal agent to Churchill.

In 1941, Brendan Bracken was promoted to the post of Minister of Information and served until 1945.

In 1945, after the end of the wartime coalition, Brendan Bracken was briefly First Lord of the Admiralty in the Churchill caretaker ministry, but lost the post in the general election won by Clement Attlee's Labour Party.

Brendan Bracken lost his North Paddington seat but soon returned to the Commons, as Member of Parliament for Bournemouth in a November 1945 by-election.

Brendan Bracken was a relentless critic of the Labour government's policy of nationalisation and the retreat from empire.

Brendan Bracken was cremated without ceremony at Golders Green Crematorium in north London.

Brendan Bracken's ashes were scattered behind the Cinque Ports by his chauffeur, Alex Aley, at Romney Marshes of which "his master, Winston Churchill was the then Lord Warden".

In Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited, Brendan Bracken served as a model for the character of Rex Mottram.

Brendan Bracken is featured in the 1981 TV mini series Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years, portrayed by Tim Pigott-Smith.