Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook

Early life

Aitken was born in Maple, Ontario, Canada, in 1879, one of the ten children of William Cuthbert Aitken, a Scottish-born Presbyterian minister, and Jane (Noble), the daughter of a prosperous local farmer and storekeeper Joseph Vaughan Noble. When he was a year old, the family moved to Newcastle, New Brunswick, which Aitken later considered to be his hometown. It was here, at the age of 13, that he set up a school newspaper, The Leader. Whilst at school, he delivered newspapers, sold newspaper subscriptions and was the local correspondent for the St John Daily Star.

Aitken took the entrance examinations for Dalhousie University, but because he had declined to sit the Greek and Latin papers, he was refused entry. He registered at the King's College Law School, but left after a short while. This was to be his only formal higher education. Aitken worked in a shop, then borrowed some money to move to Chatham, New Brunswick, where he worked as a local correspondent for the Montreal Star, sold life insurance and collected debts. Aitken attempted to train as a lawyer and worked for a short time in the law office of R. B. Bennett, a future prime minister of Canada. Aitken managed Bennett's successful campaign for a place on Chatham town council. When Bennett left the law firm, Aitken moved to Saint John, New Brunswick, where he again sold life insurance before moving to Calgary where he helped to run Bennett's campaign for a seat in the legislative assembly of the North-West Territories in the 1898 general election. After an unsuccessful attempt to establish a meat business, Aitken returned to Saint John and to selling insurance.

Early business career

In 1900, Aitken made his way to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where John F. Stairs, a member of the city's dominant business family, gave him employment and trained him in the business of finance. In 1904, when Stairs launched the Royal Securities Corporation, Aitken became a minority shareholder and the firm's general manager. Under the tutelage of Stairs, who would be his mentor and friend, Aitken engineered a number of successful business deals and was planning a series of bank mergers.

Stairs' unexpected early death in September 1904 led to Aitken acquiring control of the company and moving to Montreal, then the business capital of Canada. There he bought and sold companies, invested in stocks and shares and also developed business interests in both Cuba and Puerto Rico. He started a weekly magazine, the Canadian Century in 1910, invested in the Montreal Herald and almost acquired the Montreal Gazette. In 1907 he founded the Montreal Engineering Company. In 1909, also under the umbrella of his Royal Securities Company, Aitken founded the Calgary Power Company Limited, now the TransAlta Corporation, and oversaw the building of the Horseshoe Falls hydro station.

In 1910–1911 Aitken acquired a number of small regional cement plants in Canada, including Sir Sandford Fleming's Western Canada Cement Co. plant at Exshaw, Alberta, and amalgamated them into Canada Cement, eventually controlling four-fifths of the cement production in Canada. Canada was booming economically at the time, and Aitken had close to a monopoly on the material. There were irregularities in the stock transfers leading to the conglomeration of the cement plants, resulting in much criticism of Aitken, as well as accusations of price-gouging and poor management of the cement plants under his company's control. Aitken sold his shares, making a large amount of money.

Aitken had made his first visit to Britain in September 1908, and when he returned there in the spring of 1910, in an attempt to raise money to form a steel company, he decided to make the move permanent, but not before he led the underwriting, with a preponderance of British money, of an amalgamation of smaller units into the Steel Company of Canada. Very shortly later Aitken moved his family to the UK.

Move to Britain

In 1910, Aitken moved to Britain, and he became friends with Bonar Law, a native of New Brunswick and the only Canadian to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The two men had a lot in common: they were both sons of the manse from Scottish-Canadian families and both were successful businessmen. Aitken persuaded Bonar Law to support him in standing for the Unionist Party in the December 1910 general election at Ashton-under-Lyne. Aitken was an excellent organiser and, with plenty of money for publicity, he won the seat by 196 votes. Aitken's "bumptious" election campaign brought him some notoriety.

Aitken rarely spoke in the House of Commons, but he did promise substantial financial support to the Unionist Party, and in 1911 he was knighted by King George V. Aitken's political influence grew when Bonar Law replaced A.J. Balfour as leader of the Unionist party late in 1911. Aitken's demands for a protectionist bloc uniting the British empire made him into a disruptive force in the Conservative and Unionist ranks as the idea of a bloc would mean higher food prices, making the plan unpopular with many segments of the British people who disliked the "food taxes" and "stomach taxes". The great dividing line in British politics were between the Whole Hoggers who were willing to accept higher food prices as the consequences of a protectionist bloc vs. the Free Fooders who were not. Aitken had a financial interest in the supporting the Whole Hoggers as in 1912 he purchased all of the grain terminals in Alberta in the expectation that an Imperial Preference tariffs would soon be enacted as law. Aitken had little to do as an MP, and set about seeking the acceptance of British elites. The British historian Neal Ascherson wrote: "The first is that posh English society was no match for him. He was 'vulgar', but there was a charm in his self-promotion which made languid ladies and gentlemen want to be on his side and at his side. He was wildly rich even then, but knew how to use his wealth in hospitality and (discreetly) by rescuing grand friends from awkward debts. Above all, he was fun to be with."

In 1911, Aitken was strongly opposed to the reciprocity agreement with the United States signed by the Liberal prime minister of Canada, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, which he believed would lead to the American annexation of Canada. As such, Aitken temporarily returned to Canada to vigorously campaign for the Conservatives led by Sir Robert Borden. Aitken had his friend Rudyard Kipling intervene in the election on behalf of the Conservatives. At the time the line between British and English-Canadian national identities was more blurred than today, and Aitken did not regard Kipling as a "foreign" figure. On 7 September 1911, the Montreal Daily Star (the most widely read newspaper in Canada at the time) published a front-page appeal to all Canadians by Kipling, where he wrote: "It is her own soul that Canada risks today. Once that soul is pawned for any consideration, Canada must inevitably conform to the commercial, legal, financial, social and ethical standards which will be imposed on her by the sheer admitted weight of the United States." Kipling's article attracted much attention in Canada and was reprinted in every English-language Canadian newspaper over the following week, where it was credited with helping the Conservatives win the election.

First World War

Due to the outbreak of the First World War, Aitken was able to show off his great organisational skills. He was innovative in the employment of artists, photographers and film-makers to record life on the Western Front. Aitken also established the Canadian War Memorials Fund, which evolved into a collection of art works by the premier artists and sculptors in Britain and Canada. In accordance with establishing these works, he was also instrumental in creating the Canadian War Records Office in London and arranged for stories about Canadian forces appearing in newspapers. His visits to the Western Front, with the honorary rank of colonel in the Canadian Army, resulted in his 1916 book Canada in Flanders, a three-volume collection that chronicled the achievements of Canadian soldiers on the battlefields. Aitken also wrote several books after the war, including Politicians and the Press in 1925 and Politicians and the War in 1928. At a time when censorship was extremely strict with British journalists being kept away from the Western Front, Aitken's 'Eyewitness' reports from the Western Front, which were published in the Canadian newspapers, made him famous.

Aitken became increasingly hostile towards the British Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, whom he considered to be mismanaging the war effort. Aitken's opinion of Asquith did not improve when he failed to get a post in the Cabinet reshuffle of May 1915. An attempt by Bonar Law to secure the Order of St Michael and St George for Aitken was also blocked by Asquith. After the failure of the Dardanelles campaign, Winston Churchill was sacked as the First Lord of the Admiralty, and Aitken went to see him to offer him his sympathy. Aitken wrote about Churchill: "The charm, the imaginative sympathy of his hours of defeat, the self-confidence, the arrogance of his hours of power and prosperity". Later, when Churchill went to the Western Front, Aitken allowed him to stay as his guest at his house in Saint-Omer. Ascherson wrote: "A momentous friendship began. In return for contacts and inside information, Aitken would give Churchill hope and energy, and Churchill – in spite of some volcanic quarrels over the next half-century – came to rely on him not only as a political and journalistic ally but as an unfailing source of optimism, gossip, reassurance and sheer fun."

Aitken was happy to play a small part, which he greatly exaggerated, as a go-between when Asquith was forced from office and replaced by David Lloyd George in December 1916. The man Aitken wanted to see replace Asquith was Bonar Law, not Lloyd George. Lloyd George offered to appoint Aitken as President of the Board of Trade. At that time, an MP taking a cabinet post for the first time had to resign and stand for re-election in a by-election. Aitken made arrangements for this, but then Lloyd George decided to appoint Albert Stanley instead. Aitken was a friend of Stanley and agreed to continue with the resignation, so that Stanley could take Aitken's seat in Parliament and be eligible for ministerial office. In return, Aitken received a peerage on 23 January 1917 as the 1st Baron Beaverbrook, the name "Beaverbrook" being adopted from a small community near his boyhood home. He had initially considered "Lord Miramichi", but rejected it on the advice of Louise Manny as too difficult to pronounce. The name "Beaverbrook" also had the advantage of conveying a distinctive Canadian ring to the title.

Press baron

After the war, Beaverbrook concentrated on running the Daily Express. He turned the dull newspaper into a glittering and witty journal with an optimistic attitude, filled with an array of dramatic photo layouts. He hired first-rate writers such as Francis Williams and the cartoonist David Low. He embraced new technology and bought new presses to print the paper in Manchester. In 1919, the circulation of the Daily Express was under 40,000 a day; by 1937, it was 2,329,000 a day, making it the most successful of all British newspapers and generating huge profits for Beaverbrook, whose wealth was already such that he never took a salary. After the Second World War, the Daily Express became the largest-selling newspaper in the world, with a circulation of 3,706,000. Beaverbrook launched the Sunday Express in December 1918, but it only established a significant readership after John Junor became its editor in 1954. In 1923, in a joint deal with Lord Rothermere, Beaverbrook bought the Evening Standard. Beaverbrook acquired a controlling stake in the Glasgow Evening Citizen, and in 1928 he launched the Scottish Daily Express.

After the death of Lord Northcliffe in 1922, Beaverbrook, with Lords Rothermere, Camrose and Kemsley became one of the four so-called press barons that were the dominant figures in the inter-war press. By 1937, the four owned nearly one in every two national and local daily papers sold in Britain, as well as one in every three Sunday papers that were sold. The combined circulation of all their newspapers amounted to over thirteen million.

Beaverbrook purchased The Vineyard, Fulham, a "tiny Tudor house in Hurlingham Road" where ... "far from the centre of London I was relieved of casual callers and comparatively free of long-winded visitors. I provided facilities by means of private telephone lines without any direct contact with the Telephone Exchanges. Thus the political conferences held there were safeguarded against interruption." Powerful friends and acquaintances such as Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill, Frederick Edwin Smith, Philip Sassoon, Diana and Duff Cooper, Balfour and Tim Healy were guests at both Cherkley and the Vineyard. The circle included Valentine Castlerosse, H. G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling, who was godfather to Beaverbrook's youngest son Peter, but this did nothing to repair the rift that developed between them when Beaverbrook endorsed Irish Home Rule.

Beaverbrook, the first baron of Fleet Street, was often denounced as excessively powerful because his newspapers supposedly could make or break almost anyone. Beaverbrook enjoyed using his papers to attack his opponents and to promote his friends. From 1919 to 1922, he attacked David Lloyd George and his government on several issues. A colourful character, the American historian Randall Woods described him as "...a sharp, intense, unpredictable man. He was something of a firebrand, tending to overstatement and even irresponsibility in his editorials or public statements...Conspiracy was second nature to him...In conversation, Beaverbrook was constantly exaggerating and embellishing." Beaverbrook was considered to be likeable character full of charm and zest, but he was widely distrusted by the British elite as he was viewed as an unprincipled intriguer. A flamboyant, charismatic man full of dynamism and exuberance who stood out on account of his Canadian Maritime accent, Beaverbrook was the subject of much fascination by the public. He was disliked by his employees as a demanding boss who had telephones installed in every room of his house so that he could always call his newspapers editors to give his orders about what story was interesting him at the moment without having to wait. Beaverbrook's much vaunted principle of "independence" under which he felt free to attack his allies via his newspapers made him few friends.

"Empire Isolationism" and appeasement

In March 1933, he visited Germany, where he wrote that it was his impression that "the stories of Jewish persecution are exaggerated". His most enduring impressions of his German trip was he felt that SA could not march properly, and he seemed to regard the Nazis as something of a joke who were not capable of achieving much of anything. Beaverbrook frequently changed his views about Adolf Hitler, which caused the obituary writers who worked for him much anguish as they were forced to change their drafts of a Hitler obituary from positive to negative to positive again. After the Night of the Long Knives, Beaverbrook "turned solidly, fanatically anti-Hitler" as he compared Hitler to Al Capone and the Nazis to gangsters. Beaverbrook was to change his opinions about Hitler a number of times afterwards.

In a guest opinion column published in April 1935 in the Hearst newspapers, Beaverbrook set out to explain "the section of opinion to which I belong - the Isolationists". Beaverbrook advocated that: "Britain should make no alliances except with the United States, that we should incur no obligations, no responsibilities, no liabilities outside of the Empire except in relation to the Anglo-Saxon race". He supported the "limited liability" rearmament under which the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy were built up at the expense of the British Army as the rearmament programme in best accord with his own foreign policy ideas. In 1935, Beaverbrook campaigned against the Peace Ballot, an unofficial referendum organised in 1935 by the League of Nations Union, as the "Ballot of Blood". He was concerned that if Britain should be obliged to enforce the collective security policies of the League of Nations against aggression, it could involve Britain in wars where no British interests were at stake. In a leader in the Daily Express, he wrote the collective security policy of the League "will drag you and your children into a war" caused by "the ambitious and unscrupulous powers" that were the other members of the League (Beaverbrook failed to mention that to activate collective security required the approval of the League Council, of which Britain was a veto-holding member). Beaverbrook stated that his readers should not take part in the Peace Ballot and wrote: "Tear up the ballot paper. Throw the pieces in the waste paper basket. Turn away from Europe. Stand by the Empire and Splendid Isolation".

During the crisis caused by the Italian aggression against Ethiopia, Beaverbrook was opposed to the policy of imposing sanctions on Italy under the banner of the League of Nations, as he argued that the Italo-Ethiopian war did not concern Britain. In a leader, he warned that the sanctions on Italy might cause a "world race war", as he stated that Ethiopia was not worth fighting for, as it was an African nation. Likewise, when Germany remilitarised the Rhineland on 7 March 1936, violating both the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Locarno, Beaverbrook used his newspapers to argue against Britain taking action to enforce the treaties it had signed. Beaverbrook maintained good relations with Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in London, writing to him in 1936 about his "...friendly attitude towards your Great Leader" and he was "determined that nothing shall be said or done by any newspaper controlled by me which is likely to disturb your tenure in office". Beaverbrook concluded "while I am free, and my newspapers in the attitude I take to the Russian leader, I must say I admire and praise his conduct of government". In 1936, at the invitation of Joachim von Ribbentrop, the new German ambassador to the Court of St. James, Beaverbrook attended the opening of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but quickly became bored with the Third Reich and soon returned to Britain."

Second World War

Though Beaverbrook did not welcome the British declaration of war on the Reich on 3 September 1939, he had his newspapers take an ultra-patriotic line in supporting the war effort, not least because he knew the vast majority of his readers supported the war. During the Second World War, in May 1940, his friend Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, appointed Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production. Beaverbrook was given almost dictatorial powers over all aspects of aircraft production. In June 1940, Beaverbrook went with Churchill in a desperate mission to Tours to meet the French government with the aim of keeping France in the war. The French Premier, Paul Reynaud, was against an armistice with Germany and in favor of continuing the war from Algeria, but the strongest voice in the French cabinet was that of Marshal Philippe Pétain, the revered "Victor of Verdun", who argued for an immediate armistice. Churchill devised a scheme for an Anglo-French Union as a way to keep France in the war, to which Beaverbrook was strongly opposed. Unlike Churchill, Beaverbrook did not see any particular importance of keeping France in the war, and was much more indifferent to the prospect of France being defeated than was the prime minister, arguing that Britain still had the Commonwealth and the empire. Churchill's viewpoint that if France were occupied, it would shorten the flying time of the Luftwaffe to bomb Britain from hours to minutes and allow the Kriegsmarine to use the French Atlantic ports to attack shipping in the Western Approaches made no impression on Beaverbrook. The plans for an Anglo-French union fell flat when Pétain - who regarded the plan for a union as a way for the British to seize France's colonial empire - persuaded the French cabinet to reject it.

With Churchill's blessing, Beaverbrook overhauled all aspects of wartime aircraft production. He increased production targets by 15% across the board, took control of aircraft repairs and RAF storage units, replaced the management of plants that were underperforming, and released German Jewish engineers from internment to work in the factories. He seized materials and equipment destined for other departments and was perpetually at odds with the Air Ministry. Beaverbrook did not tolerate the arguments that supply "bottlenecks" were hindering aircraft production and required that aircraft manufacturers submit to him a daily list of "bottlenecks" which he made his mission to resolve. One of Beaverbrook's first acts as minister of aircraft production was to order the "cannibalization" of all wrecked aircraft, which totalled about 2,000 aeroplanes. For every two wrecked planes, it was possible to fashion a new plane. His appeal for pots and pans "to make Spitfires" was afterwards revealed by his son, Sir Max Aitken, to have been nothing more than a propaganda exercise. Still, a Time Magazine cover story declared, "Even if Britain goes down this fall, it will not be Lord Beaverbrook's fault. If she holds out, it will be his triumph. This war is a war of machines. It will be won on the assembly line."

Later life

Beaverbrook devoted himself to Churchill's 1945 general election campaign, but a Daily Express headline warning that a Labour victory would amount to the 'Gestapo in Britain' (adapted from a passage in a radio election speech by Churchill on 4 June) was a huge mistake and completely misjudged the public mood. Beaverbrook renounced his British citizenship and left the Conservative Party in 1951, but remained an Empire loyalist throughout his life. In 1947, Beaverbrook was vehemently opposed to the plans to end the Raj, with the colony of India to be granted independence and partitioned into the new nations of India and Pakistan. Through the decision to end the Raj was taken by the Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee, Beaverbrook directed his ire against the last Viceroy, Admiral Louis Mountbatten, who Beaverbrook believed could have somehow defied the government and not granted independence if he had wanted to. In a leader, the Daily Express wrote that "in all the world we have few more dangerous enemies" than Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru. Beaverbrook never forgave Mountbatten and for the rest of his life used the Daily Express to blacken his reputation and always presented Mountbatten in the worst possible light.

Beaverbrook took a typically idiosyncratic line with regard to the Cold War, holding out hopes in the editorial line of the Daily Express until 1948 that the wartime "Big Three" alliance of the Soviet Union, the United States and the United Kingdom should continue after the war. It was only after the Berlin blockade began in 1948 that Beaverbrook had the Daily Express take an anti-Soviet line, but even then he continued to hold out hopes that the Cold War would not be permanent and it might be possible to revive the "Big Three" alliance. Beaverbrook had Wilfred Burchett, an Australian journalist of extreme left-wing views based in East Berlin to run a column in The Daily Express entitled "The Russian Window" starting in October 1948. The nature of Burchett's "Russian Window" reports about life behind the Iron Curtain such as his claims that there was a surplus of luxury goods on sale in shops in Moscow led to accusations that he was engaged in propaganda for the Soviet Union, a nation that Burchett clearly admired. When Beaverbrook asked the editor of the Daily Express, Arthur Christiansen about Burchett after reading several of his "Russian Window" columns, he was told: "He is, I think, a fellow traveler, but nevertheless an able chap". Even after the "Russian Window" column was terminated, Burchett continued to work as a free-lancer for The Daily Express based in Budapest, where he denied in one article that Cardinal József Mindszenty had confessed at his show trial under the influence of "truth drugs". In 1950, Christiansen turned down a chance to publish photographs of South Korean policemen engaged in a mass execution of suspected Communists because to do so would have "given our enemies a chance to say we are playing the Communist game and did the Daily Worker propaganda for them". The photographs were later published in The Daily Worker which presented the executions as typical of justice in South Korea, and led to Beaverbrook to complain that it was a shame that The Daily Express did not have those "real fine pictures".

Personal life

On 29 January 1906, in Halifax, Aitken married Gladys Henderson Drury, daughter of Major-General Charles William Drury CB (a first cousin of Admiral Sir Charles Carter Drury) and Mary Louise Drury (née Henderson). They had three children before her death on 1 December 1927.

Their son Max Aitken Jr. became a fighter pilot with 601 Squadron, rising to Wing Commander. He logged 16 victories in World War II and was awarded both a DSO and DFC.

Their daughter Janet Gladys Aitken was married to Ian Campbell, who later became the 11th Duke of Argyll. Together they had one daughter, Lady Jeanne Campbell.

Beaverbrook remained a widower for many years until 1963 when he married Marcia Anastasia Christoforides (1910–1994), the widow of his friend Sir James Dunn.

Beaverbrook was rarely a faithful husband, and even in old age was often accused of treating women with disrespect. In Britain, he established the then-married Jean Norton as his mistress at Cherkley. Aitken left Norton for a Jewish ballet dancer named Lily Ernst whom he had rescued from pre-war Austria.

Historian

After the First World War, Beaverbrook had written Politicians and the Press in 1925, and Politicians and the War in two volumes, the first in 1928 and the second in 1932, republished in one volume in 1960. Upon their original publication, the books were largely ignored by professional historians and the only favourable reviews were in Beaverbrook's own newspapers. However, when the combined edition of Politicians and the War came out, the reviews were more positive. A. J. P. Taylor said it was "Tacitus and Aubrey rolled into one".

Later, Taylor said: "The enduring merits of the book are really beyond cavil. It provides essential testimony for events during a great political crisis...It contains character sketches worthy of Aubrey. On a wider canvas, it displays the behaviour of political leaders in wartime. The narrative is carried along by rare zest and wit, yet with the detached impartiality of the true scholar". Sir John Elliot in 1981 said the work "will remain, despite all carping, the authoritative narrative; nor does the story want in the telling thereof".

Men and Power 1917–1918 was published in 1956. It is not a coherent narrative, but is divided by separate episodes centred on one man, such as Carson, Robertson, Rothermere and others. The reviews were favourable, with Taylor's review in The Observer greatly pleasing Beaverbrook. The book sold over 23,000 copies.

When The Decline and Fall of Lloyd George was published in 1963, favourable reviewers included Clement Attlee, Roy Jenkins, Robert Blake, Lord Longford, Sir C. P. Snow, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, Richard Crossman and Denis Brogan. Kenneth Young said the book was "the finest of all his writing".

Beaverbrook was both admired and despised in Britain, sometimes at the same time: in his 1956 autobiography, David Low quotes H.G. Wells as saying of Beaverbrook: "If ever Max ever gets to Heaven, he won't last long. He will be chucked out for trying to pull off a merger between Heaven and Hell after having secured a controlling interest in key subsidiary companies in both places, of course."

Beaverbrook was of an imperialist mindset, with the quote, "There are countries so underdeveloped today that the gift of independence is like the gift of a razor to a child", attributed to him in a panel discussion on Canadian TV.

Death

Lord Beaverbrook died in Leatherhead in 1964, aged 85. He had recently attended a birthday banquet organized by fellow Canadian press baron, Lord Thomson of Fleet, where he was determined to be seen on his usual good form, despite suffering from cancer.

A bust of him by Oscar Nemon stands in the park in the town square of Newcastle, New Brunswick, not far from where he sold newspapers as a young boy. His ashes are in the plinth of the bust.

The Beaverbrook Foundation continues his philanthropic interests. In 1957, a bronze statue of Lord Beaverbrook was erected at the centre of Officers' Square in Fredericton, New Brunswick, paid for by money raised by children throughout the province.

Legacy

Beaverbrook and his wife, Lady Beaverbrook, left a considerable legacy to both New Brunswick and the United Kingdom. In 2014, he was named a National Historic Person on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. He is particularly cherished at the University of New Brunswick, to which he devoted most of his later largesse and at which he situated his extensive archival collection of British public life in the first half of the 20th century. Among other gifts over three years from 1946 he tripled the size of the library at UNB, and bestowed the Old Manse Library in Newcastle Miramichi. He endowed the Lord Beaverbrook Overseas Scholarships to send UNB undergraduates for a spell at the University of London. His legacy, and memorials, includes the following buildings:

UNB:

Aitken House

Aitken University Centre

Lady Beaverbrook Gymnasium

Lady Beaverbrook Residence

Beaverbrook House (UNBSJ E-Commerce Centre)

City of Fredericton, New Brunswick

Lady Beaverbrook Arena (formerly operated by the University of New Brunswick)

The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, including world-renowned art collection (New Brunswick's provincial gallery)

The Fredericton Playhouse

Lord Beaverbrook Hotel

Lord Beaverbrook statue in Officer's Square

City of Miramichi, New Brunswick

Max Aitken Academy

Lord Beaverbrook Arena (LBA)

Beaverbrook's published works

Canada in Flanders. London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1916.

Success. Small, Maynard and Company. 1922. 2003: ISBN 978-0-7661-5409-4.

Politicians and the Press. London: Hutchinson. 1925.

Politicians and the War, Vol. 1. London: Oldbourne. 1928.

Politicians and the War, Vol. 2. London: Oldbourne. 1932.

The Resources of The British Empire. London: Lane. 1934.

Why Didn't you Help the Finns? Are you in the Hands of the Jews? And 10 Questions, Answers. London: London Express. 1939.

Spirit of the Soviet Union. London: The Pilot Press. 1942.

Don't Trust to Luck. London: London Express Newspaper. 1954.

The Three Keys to Success. London: Hawthorn. 1956.

Men and Power, 1917–1918. North Haven, Connecticut: The Shoe String Press. 1956.

Friends: Sixty years of Intimate personal relations with Richard Bedford Bennett. London: Heinemann. 1959.

Courage, The Story of Sir James Dunn. Fredericton: Brunswick Press. 1961.

My Early Life. Fredericton: Atlantic Advocate Book. 1962.

The Divine Propagandist. London: Heinemann. 1962.

In popular culture

For a period of time, Beaverbrook employed novelist Evelyn Waugh in London and abroad. Waugh later lampooned his employer by portraying him as Lord Copper in Scoop and as Lord Monomark in both Put Out More Flags and Vile Bodies.

The Kinks recorded "Mr Churchill Says" for their 1969 album Arthur, which contains the lines: "Mr Beaverbrook says: 'We've gotta save our tin/And all the garden gates and empty cans are gonna make us win...'."

Beaverbrook was one of eight notable Britons cited in Bjørge Lillelien's famous "Your boys took a hell of a beating" commentary at the end of an English football team defeat to Norway in 1981, mentioned alongside British Prime Ministers Churchill, Thatcher and Attlee.

In C. J. Sansom's alternate history novel Dominion, Lord Beaverbrook is the incumbent Prime Minister in 1952, heading a Nazi collaborationist puppet government as a result of the United Kingdom entering into an armistice in 1940.