37 Facts About Brendan Bracken

Brendan Bracken is best remembered for supporting Churchill during his whole political career.

Brendan Bracken was Minister of Information from 1941 to 1945, managing the United Kingdom's propaganda efforts against Nazi Germany during the War.

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 Irish Republican Brotherhood.

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 moved to London, where he joined the League of Nations Union and made pro-imperialist speeches.

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.

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

Brendan Bracken edited the Financial News, and The Practitioner before being promoted to managing director of The Economist in 1928.

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

Brendan Bracken himself was elected to the House of Commons in 1929 as a Unionist for the London constituency of North Paddington, which he won with just 528 votes.

From 1934 Brendan Bracken supported Churchill's calls for rearmament in Parliament.

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.

In 1941, Brendan Bracken persuaded by Lord Beaverbrook and Churchill himself to become Britain's wartime Minister for Information.

Brendan Bracken won over most of the proprietors by giving them more news, often on a confidential basis, and censorship was kept to a minimum.

Brendan Bracken is said to have inspired George's Orwell Big Brother Character in the novel 1984.

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 organised and financed the restoration of the eighteenth-century school building as a library, with a commemoratory inscription, "Remember Winston Churchill", which still stands today.

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".

Brendan Bracken was a consequential figure in British politics during his lifetime.

Brendan Bracken was a spin doctor par excellence half a century before the term was invented.

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 miniseries Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years, portrayed by Tim Pigott-Smith.

Brendan Bracken appears as a major character in Thomas Kilroy's 1986 play Double Cross.