Frederick Smith, 2nd Earl of Birkenhead

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Frederick Winston Furneaux Smith, 2nd Earl of Birkenhead (7 December 1907–10 June 1975) was a British historian. He is best known for writing a controversial biography of Rudyard Kipling that was suppressed by the Kipling family for many years.

The son of F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead, he was known as Viscount Furneaux from 1922, when his father, then 1st Viscount Birkenhead, was created Earl of Birkenhead. Lord Furneaux was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford and inherited his father's peerages in 1930.

In 1935 he married The Hon. Sheila Berry, second daughter of the 1st Viscount Camrose. The couple had a son, Frederick, Viscount Furneaux, in 1936.

For the first three years of the Second War, Lord Birkenhead served with a Territorial Army Anti-Tank unit. Following a course at the Staff College, Camberley, Major 'Freddy' Birkenhead was assigned to the Foreign Office's Political Intelligence Department, popularly known as the Political Warfare Executive, or PWE for short. He saw action in Croatia, as second-in-command of a sub-mission headed by Randolph Churchill, under Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean's 37th Military Mission, which included Evelyn Waugh.

Lord Birkenhead served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lord Halifax (1938-39), and as Lord-in-Waiting to King George VI (1938-40 and 1951-52) and Queen Elizabeth II (1952-55).

[edit] Books

• Frederick Edwin Earl of Birkenhead (1933 and 1936)
• F.E.: The Life of F.E. Smith, first Earl of Birkenhead" (London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1960).
• Furneaux-Smith, F. (1961). The Professor and the Prime Minister: The Official Life of Professor F. A. Lindemann Viscount Cherwell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 
• Life of Lord Halifax (1965)
• The life of Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (1969)
• Rudyard Kipling (1978)

Political offices
Preceded by The Earl of Munster	Lord-in-Waiting 1938 – 1940	Succeeded by New government
Preceded by New government	Lord-in-Waiting 1951 – 1955	Succeeded by The Lord Chesham
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by F. E. Smith	Earl of Birkenhead 1930 – 1975	Succeeded by Frederick Smith