Duff Cooper

The Right Honourable The Viscount Norwich GCMG DSO PC
Secretary of State for War
In office 22 November 1935 – 28 May 1937
Monarch	George V Edward VIII George VI
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	The Viscount Halifax
Succeeded by	Leslie Hore-Belisha
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
In office 20 July 1941 – 11 November 1943
Prime Minister	Winston Churchill
Preceded by	The Lord Hankey
Succeeded by	Ernest Brown
British Ambassador to France
In office 1944–1948
Monarch	George VI
Preceded by	Vacant due to German occupation
Succeeded by	Oliver Harvey
Personal details
Born	(1890-02-22)22 February 1890
Died	1 January 1954(1954-01-01) (aged 63) At sea, North Atlantic
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative
Spouse(s)	Lady Diana Manners (1892–1986)
Children	John Julius
Parents	Sir Alfred Cooper Lady Agnes Duff
Alma mater	New College, Oxford
Military service
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army
Rank	Lieutenant
Unit	Grenadier Guards
Battles/wars	First World War Western Front
Awards	Distinguished Service Order Mentioned in Despatches

Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich, GCMG, DSO, PC (22 February 1890 – 1 January 1954), known as Duff Cooper, was a British Conservative Party politician, diplomat and author. In the intense political debates of the late 1930s over appeasement, he first put his trust in the League of Nations, and realised that war with Germany was inevitable. He denounced the Munich agreement of 1938 as meaningless, cowardly, and unworkable, as he resigned from the cabinet. When Winston Churchill became prime minister in May 1940, he named Cooper as Minister of Information. From 1941, he served in numerous diplomatic roles. His most important role was representative to Charles de Gaulle's Free France (1943–44) and ambassador to France from 1944–48.

Background and education[edit]

Duff Cooper (he was always known as “Duff” rather than “Alfred”) was born at Cavendish Square on 22 February 1890.^[1] He was the only son of fashionable society doctor Sir Alfred Cooper (1843–1908), a surgeon and specialist in the sexual problems of the upper classes, and Lady Agnes Duff, daughter of James Duff, 5th Earl Fife. She had already eloped with two husbands, the first of whom she deserted and the second of whom died, before marrying Cooper in 1882. Duff Cooper had three older sisters.^[2] He had royal connections: his maternal uncle, the first Duke of Fife, was married to Louise, Princess Royal. Cooper enjoyed a typical gentleman's upbringing of country estates and London society. He attended two prep schools, including Wixenford School.^[3] He was unhappy at prep school, but was then very happy at Eton College.^[4] One of his maternal great-grandmothers was Lady Elizabeth FitzClarence, an illegitimate daughter of King William IV who fathered eight children with Dorothea Jordan.

Oxford and early career[edit]

At New College Oxford (1908–11), his Eton friendship with John Nevile Manners won him entry into a famous circle of young aristocrats and intellectuals known as the Coterie, including Patrick Shaw-Stewart, Raymond Asquith, Sir Denis Anson, Edward Horner and the celebrated Lady Diana Manners. He cultivated a reputation for eloquence and fast living and although he had established a reputation as a poet, he earned an even stronger reputation for gambling, womanising, and drinking in his studied emulation of the life of the 18th and 19th century Whig statesman Charles James Fox.

His circle of drinking, gambling and womanising friends would almost all be killed in the First World War. Cooper’s memory and gift for writing enabled him to do well at exams. He narrowly missed a first in Modern History.^[5]

Following Oxford, he entered the Foreign Service in October 1913, at the third attempt.^[6]

During the war he worked in the commercial and the contraband departments.^[7] Owing to the national importance of his work at the cipher desk, he was exempted from military service until June 1917, when he joined the Grenadier Guards.^[8] He had not actively sought to join the Army but was happy to be “released” as a result of the manpower shortage, as he thought joining the Army the decent thing to do. To his surprise most of his fellow officer cadets were working class and lower middle class men, almost all of whom had already served in the ranks (Old Men Forget, p66).^[9]

He spent six months at the front in the Guards, where he proved himself to be both brave and a natural leader. He suffered a minor wound in the advance to the Albert Canal in August 1918, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for conspicuous gallantry, a rare decoration for a junior officer.^[10]

Almost all of his closest friends, including Shaw-Stewart, Horner and Asquith were killed in the war, drawing him closer to Lady Diana Manners, an extremely popular social figure hailed for her beauty and eccentricities. His service in the First World War was highlighted by the ITV programme The Great War: The People's Story, where his correspondence with Diana Cooper was one of those selected to be dramatised.

Postwar and marriage[edit]

After demobilisation he returned to the Egypt Department, and was then Private Secretary to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary (i.e. assistant to the junior minister). He needed money to enter politics.^[11]

On 2 June 1919 he married Lady Diana Manners, whose family were initially opposed to the match (she was officially the daughter of the 8th Duke of Rutland, but was widely believed – including by herself – to be the daughter of Harry Cust). She tolerated Cooper's numerous affairs.^[12]

Cooper's affairs included the Franco-American Singer sewing-machine heiress Daisy Fellowes, the socialite Gloria Guinness, the French novelist Louise Leveque de Vilmorin and the writer Susan Mary Alsop (then an American diplomat's wife, by whom he had an illegitimate son, William Patten Jr, who later fathered W. Samuel Patten.).^{[13][14][15][16]}

The polo player 'Boy' Capel's wife Diana and the Anglo-Irish socialite and fashion model Maxime de la Falaise were two more, although Lady Diana reportedly did not mind and loved him nonetheless, explaining to their son that "They were the flowers, but I was the tree."^[17]

Cooper played a significant role in the Egyptian and Turkish crises in the early 1920s.

In 1923 Lady Diana played the Madonna in the Max Reinhold pantomime “The Miracle”. The money enabled Cooper to resign from the Foreign Office in July 1924.^[18]

Political career 1924-39[edit]

1924-31: in and out of Parliament[edit]

Within weeks Cooper was selected for the winnable seat of Oldham, where he was elected at the General Election in October 1924, with a 13,000 majority over the sitting Labour member. He made a very successful maiden speech on Egypt, which was praised by H. A. L. Fisher who spoke next. He was seen as a coming man, along with Eden and Macmillan (who was then regarded as a man with a future, unlike in the 1930s). Cooper was a stalwart supporter of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, and a friend of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill. In January 1928 he was appointed Financial Secretary to the War Office, not a job he would have chosen. The Secretary of State Sir Laming Worthington-Evans gave him a lot of responsibility. He very likely would have been promoted if the Conservatives had won the election in 1929, but they were defeated and Cooper lost his own seat.^[19]

John Julius, his only legitimate child, was born in 1929.^[20]

Out of Parliament he wrote a short biography of the French statesman Talleyrand. He wrote slowly but seldom needed to revise his drafts. Philip Ziegler writes that “rarely can subject and author have been more satisfactorily matched” as both men were worldly and disliked cant.^[21] The book was eventually published in 1932 by his nephew Rupert Hart-Davis to critical praise and lasting success.^[22]

1931-5: by-election and junior minister[edit]

The March 1931 by-election for the constituency of Westminster St George's (caused by the death of Cooper's recent boss, Laming Worthington-Evans), saw Beaverbrook's Empire Free Trade Crusade party threatening the Conservative position at a time when satisfaction with Baldwin's leadership was at a low. When the original Conservative candidate stepped down, Duff Cooper agreed to contest the election in what was regarded as a referendum on Baldwin's leadership. He won the seat with a majority of 5,710, thus returning to Parliament and serving until 1945.^[23][24]

In August 1931, on the formation of the National Government, he was appointed Financial Secretary to the War Office under the elderly Lord Crewe, who left Cooper to do a great deal of the work. In June 1934 he was appointed Financial Secretary to the Treasury, a traditional stepping stone to the Cabinet. This brought him close to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain, who thought highly of him. He had been to Germany, and had seen and been appalled by a Nuremberg Rally. Chamberlain told him to tone down his criticisms of Hitler. Cooper urged rearmament, not then a fashionable view, and briefed Churchill, then on the backbenches, that Hitler was serious and wanted war.^[25]

Cooper wrote the official biography of Field Marshal Haig, which appeared in 1935 and 1936. It was criticised for pro-Haig bias and what Ziegler calls “lack of consideration”.^[26]

1931-5: Cabinet and resignation[edit]

In November 1935, after the General Election, Cooper was promoted to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for War. He was appointed to the Privy Council. During the Abdication Crisis he was sympathetic to Edward VIII and to the possibility of a morganatic marriage, and in vain advised him to wait until after his coronation (due in 1937) before picking a fight with the government over his plans to marry Wallis Simpson.^[27]

He felt out of kilter with the Conservative leadership and was surprised when the new Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appointed him First Lord of the Admiralty in May 1937. Philip Ziegler writes that his tenure of office was “an unequivocal success”. He enjoyed high living on board the Admiralty yacht HMS Enchantress, but fought Chamberlain and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon for more spending on the Royal Navy. Chamberlain saw him as indiscreet and as a firebrand; by the time of the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler Cooper was isolated in the Cabinet as the most public critic of Chamberlain's appeasement policy.^[28]

On 3 October 1938, the day after Munich, he denounced the agreement and resigned from the Cabinet.^[29] On doing so he said, "War with honour or peace with dishonour," he might have been persuaded to accept, "but war with dishonour—that was too much."^[30] Fellow appeasement-critic and Conservative Party MP Vyvyan Adams described Cooper's actions as "the first step in the road back to national sanity."

As a backbencher he joined the coterie around Anthony Eden (who had resigned as Foreign Secretary in February 1938), but made only muted criticisms of the Government. His main source of income was writing articles for the Evening Standard. He argued for an Anglo-French alliance.^[31]

Second World War[edit]

By now Cooper appeared in German propaganda as one of Britain's three most dangerous Conservative warmongers.^[32] Unlike Churchill and Eden, Cooper was not offered a job on the outbreak of war in September 1939. He went on a lecture tour of the USA, where he called for the democracies to stand firm against the dictatorships, and predicted that Churchill would become Prime Minister, which seemed an eccentric prediction at the time.^[33] Cooper later took a prominent role in the famous Norway Debate of 1940, which led to Chamberlain's downfall.

From May 1940 he was Minister of Information under Churchill, but disliked the job. The press portrayed him as a spin doctor and as an enemy of a free press. His inquirers into the state of public morale were known as “Cooper’s snoopers”. He authorised a strong denunciation of the author PG Wodehouse for making an ill-advised humorous broadcast from Berlin.^[34]

In July 1941 he was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, to his relief. He was sent to Singapore as Minister Resident. He had authority to form a War Cabinet there, but both military and civil authorities were reluctant to cooperate with him. To his relief Archibald Wavell was appointed Supreme Commander ABDA. He was - unfairly in Philip Ziegler's view - blamed for the Fall of Singapore after his return to the UK. Eighteen months of underemployment followed. He chaired the Cabinet Committee on Security. He did a lot of writing and spent his weekends at Bognor where his wife had a smallholding.^[35]

Ambassador to France[edit]

In December 1943 Cooper was appointed British Representative on the Free French Committee of National Liberation (FCLN). His remit included maintaining a working relationship between Churchill and de Gaulle, two men whom he found equally difficult. Paris was liberated in August 1944 and he moved there in September. On 18 November 1944 he formally presented his credentials as British Ambassador to France. He was to prove a very popular ambassador, with Lady Diana helping to make his term of office a great social success. Some contemporary eyebrows were raised at his willingness to entertain people with dubious records during the recent war, or his lack of interest at entertaining trade unionists.^[36]

Cooper was in the words of the British historian P. M. H. Bell such a "devoted Francophile" that during his time as ambassador to Paris that he often tried the patience of the Foreign Office by going well beyond his instructions to maintain good relations with France by trying to create an Anglo-French alliance that would dominate post-war Europe.^[37]

Despite being a Conservative, Cooper was not replaced as Ambassador when Labour won the 1945 election as Ernest Bevin, the new Foreign Secretary valued an ambassador who was close friends with so many French politicians and even managed to have a friendship of sorts with the famously Anglophobic Charles de Gaulle.^{[38] [39]}

In January 1947, Cooper acting without orders began the process that led to the Treaty of Dunkirk when he suggested to the French Premier Leon Blum that there should an Anglo-French military alliance, an idea Blum took up thinking this was an offer from London.^[40] The Treaty, which fulfilled his long-held desire for an Anglo-French alliance, was signed on 4 March 1947. His term as ambassador ended at the end of 1947.^[41]

He bequeathed a large part of his library to the British Embassy in Paris. To the dismay of his successor he remained in Paris, living at the Chateau de St Firmin in the Park of Chantilly.^[42]

Family[edit]

Duff Cooper was married to Lady Diana Manners from 1919 to his death. Cooper's only legitimate child, John Julius Norwich (1929–2018), whose godfather was Lord Beaverbrook,^[43] became well known as a writer and television host.^[44] His granddaughter Artemis Cooper has published several books, including A Durable Fire: The Letters of Duff and Diana Cooper, 1913–50. Another granddaughter is screenwriter Allegra Huston, the only child of Norwich and Enrica Soma Huston, estranged wife of the American film director John Huston. Duff Cooper's niece Enid Levita (daughter of his sister Stephanie), is the paternal grandmother of the Conservative Party leader David Cameron, who served as Prime Minister from 2010–2016.

Retirement and death[edit]

Cooper was raised to GCMG in 1948.^[45][46]

He took on some company directorships, including that of the Wagons-Lits company, but essentially devoted the rest of his life to writing. During the war he had written a life of the Biblical King David, and in 1949 he published Sergeant Shakespeare, a book about Shakespeare’s early life. The Cabinet Office tried in vain, on security grounds, to block publication of his only novel, Operation Heartbreak (1950), as it was based on a real incident during the war. The book has recently been republished by Persephone Books.^[47]

He was created Viscount Norwich, of Aldwick in the County of Sussex, in 1952, in recognition of his political and literary career.^[48] The title was not popular with some of the local dignitaries of that city.^[49] His wife refused to be called Lady Norwich, claiming that it sounded too much like "porridge" and promptly took out a newspaper advertisement declaring that she would retain her previous style of Lady Diana Cooper. Cooper's sixth and final book was his acclaimed memoirs, Old Men Forget, which appeared on 5 July 1953.^[50] The Duff Cooper Diaries: 1915–1951, edited by his son John Julius Norwich, appeared posthumously in 2005.^[51]

Cooper suffered a dangerous haemorrhage in May 1953. On 1 January 1954 he was on board the French liner Colombie when he died suddenly aged 63. He was with his wife on a voyage to Jamaica to stay with friends. The ship docked at the Spanish port of Vigo so his body could be flown back to Britain.^[52][53]

Cooper's estate was valued for probate at £14,303 7s (equivalent to £359,000 in 2016).^[54]

Legacy[edit]

After Cooper's death, a British literary award, the Duff Cooper Prize, was established in his name.^[55]

Cooper was the subject of a biography by John Charmley (1986).

His biographer Philip Ziegler wrote that Cooper was “not totally successful in worldly terms but never dull”. He could be short-tempered and self-indulgent, and devoted far too much time and energy to wine, women and gambling. However, he was “never mean or ignoble” and was “a proud patriot” who sometimes had “true nobility”, although he was “too proud to court popularity” and too reserved to attract it readily.^[56]

In popular culture[edit]

H. G. Wells, in The Shape of Things to Come, published in 1934, predicted a Second World War in which Britain would not participate but would vainly try to effect a peaceful compromise. In this vision, Duff Cooper was mentioned as one of several prominent Britons delivering "brilliant pacific speeches" which "echo throughout Europe" but fail to end the war; the other would-be peacemakers, in Wells' vision, included Leslie Hore Belisha, Ellen Wilkinson and Randolph Churchill.^[57]

Styles of address[edit]

• 1890–1918: Mr Duff Cooper
• 1918–1924: Mr Duff Cooper DSO
• 1924–1929: Mr Duff Cooper DSO MP
• 1929–1931: Mr Duff Cooper DSO
• 1931–1935: Mr Duff Cooper DSO MP
• 1935–1945: The Rt Hon. Duff Cooper DSO MP
• 1945–1947: The Rt Hon. Duff Cooper DSO
• 1948–1952: The Rt Hon. Sir Duff Cooper GCMG DSO
• 1952–1954: The Rt Hon. The Viscount Norwich GCMG DSO PC

Ancestry[edit]

References[edit]

Notes

Bibliography

• Charmley, John. Duff Cooper. Revised paperback ed. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997 (1986). ISBN 978-0-7538-0246-5.
• Cooper, Duff. Talleyrand. Grove Great Lives. New York: Grove Atlantic, 2001 (1932). ISBN 978-0-8021-3767-8.
• Janet Aitken Kidd (1988). The Beaverbrook Girl : An Autobiography. London. 
• Matthew (editor), Colin (2004). Dictionary of National Biography. 13. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198614111. CS1 maint: Extra text: authors list (link) (pp. 240–3), essay on Duff Cooper written by Philip Ziegler.
• Norwich, John Julius. The Duff Cooper Diaries 1915–1951. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005. ISBN 978-0-297-84843-1
• Ziegler, Philip (January 2008). "Cooper, (Alfred) Duff, first Viscount Norwich (1890–1954)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 11 December 2008.  (subscription or UK public library membership required)
• Ralph Keysers : https://www.academia.edu/10077005/Hommage_à_Duff_Cooper^{[permanent dead link]}.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich.

• Works by or about Duff Cooper at Internet Archive
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Viscount Norwich
• "Archival material relating to Duff Cooper". UK National Archives. 
• Newspaper clippings about Duff Cooper in the 20th Century Press Archives of the German National Library of Economics (ZBW)

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by William John Tout Edward Grigg	Member of Parliament for Oldham 1924–1929 With: William Wiggins	Succeeded by James Wilson Gordon Lang
Preceded by Sir Laming Worthington-Evans, Bt	Member of Parliament for Westminster St George's 1931–1945	Succeeded by Arthur Jared Palmer Howard
Political offices
Preceded by Douglas King	Financial Secretary to the War Office 1928–1929	Succeeded by Manny Shinwell
Preceded by William Sanders	Financial Secretary to the War Office 1931–1934	Succeeded by Douglas Hacking
Preceded by Leslie Hore-Belisha	Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1934–1935	Succeeded by William Morrison
Preceded by The Viscount Halifax	Secretary of State for War 1935–1937	Succeeded by Leslie Hore-Belisha
Preceded by Sir Samuel Hoare	First Lord of the Admiralty 1937–1938	Succeeded by The Earl Stanhope
Preceded by Sir John Reith	Minister of Information 1940–1941	Succeeded by Brendan Bracken
Preceded by The Lord Hankey	Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 1941–1943	Succeeded by Ernest Brown
Diplomatic posts
Vacant German occupation of France during World War II. Title last held by Ronald Campbell	British Ambassador to France 1944–1948	Succeeded by Oliver Harvey
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation	Viscount Norwich 1952–1954	Succeeded by John Julius Cooper