Frederic Maugham, 1st Viscount Maugham
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Frederic Herbert Maugham, 1st Viscount Maugham [1] [2] (1866-March 23, 1958) was a British lawyer and judge who served as Lord Chancellor from 1938 until 1939 despite having virtually no political career at all.
Maugham was born in 1866 and educated at Dover College and the University of Cambridge where he became President of the Cambridge Union Society in Lent Term 1889. He then embarked upon a legal career, though in 1922 he briefly considered entering politics as a Conservative Member of Parliament but could not find a seat.
In 1935 he became a Lord of Appeal, made a life peer and entered the House of Lords as Baron Maugham, of Hartfield in the County of Sussex. Three years later he was offered the role of Lord Chancellor by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Such was Maugham's lack of political experience that Chamberlain and he had never met before. He was offered the role because there were very few obvious available choices amongst the ranks of parliamentary supporters of the National Government to replace the ailing Lord Hailsham, as the obvious successor, Sir Thomas Inskip, could not be moved from the position of Minister for Coordination of Defence. As Maugham was already 71 years old it was widely expected that he would prove to be a mere stop-gap appointment, to be succeeded by Inskip as soon as it was possible for the latter to leave Defence. However by the time this occurred in early 1939, Chamberlain was sufficiently impressed with Maugham's work to offer to retain him, whilst allowing Inskip the opportunity to defer choosing between becoming Lord Chancellor and remaining in the House of Commons with the possibility of becoming Prime Minister (a choice that Hailsham had always regretted) and intended to make a change at the next general election, which was expected to take place that year.
However war intervened and Chamberlain carried out a fullscale reconstruction of his government. As part of this Maugham was allowed to retire, to be finally succeeded by Inskip under the title Viscount Caldecote. Maugham took the retirement honour of Viscount Maugham which, unlike his barony, was hereditary.
Maugham married Helen Mary Romer, daughter of the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Romer in 1896. They had four children:
- Robert Cecil Romer Maugham (1916-1981), 2nd Viscount (Robin Maugham)
- The Hon. Kate Mary Bruce (1897-1961)
- The Hon. Edith Honor Earl (1901-1996)
- The Hon. Diana Julia Marr-Johnson (1908-2007)
Lord Maugham was the elder brother of the famous writer W. Somerset Maugham.
[edit] Publications
- The Tichbourne Case (1936)
- The Truth About The Munich Crisis (1944)
- U.N.O. and War Crimes (1951)
- At The End of The Day (autobiography) (1951)
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by The Lord Hailsham |
Lord Chancellor 1938–1939 |
Succeeded by The Viscount Caldecote |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| Preceded by New creation |
Viscount Maugham 1938–1958 |
Succeeded by Robin Maugham |
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