Lord Halifax was a church-going, fox-hunting aristocrat, but it was his political guile that earned him Churchill’s nickname ‘The Holy Fox’.

As Viceroy of India, his deal with Gandhi ended the Civil Disobedience campaign before it could force the British to quit. His meeting with Hitler in 1937 was a milestone in appeasement, yet just days before Munich, Halifax repudiated the policy and demanded ‘the destruction of Nazism’. By May 1940, it was he, not Winston Churchill, who was the choice for Britain’s war leader. Andrew Roberts has drawn on remarkable private documents to present Lord Halifax as an enigmatic, influential and much-maligned politician.

‘A biography of astonishing maturity and distinction’ - Philip Ziegler

‘Mr Roberts’ narrative account of the crucial months grips and convinces’ - Andrew Marr

‘It is quite a life, and in Andrew Roberts the life has found quite a biographer - elegant, sometimes funny, splendidly in control of his sources’ - Norman Stone