Leo Amery

The Right Honourable Leo Amery CH
First Lord of the Admiralty
In office 31 October 1922 – 28 January 1924
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	Bonar Law Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	The Lord Lee of Fareham
Succeeded by	The Lord Chelmsford
Secretary of State for the Colonies
In office 6 November 1924 – 4 June 1929
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	J. H. Thomas
Succeeded by	The Lord Passfield
Secretary of State for India and Burma
In office 13 May 1940 – 26 July 1945
Monarch	George VI
Prime Minister	Winston Churchill
Preceded by	The Lord Zetland
Succeeded by	The Lord Pethick-Lawrence
Personal details
Born	Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery (1873-11-22)22 November 1873 Gorakhpur, North-Western Provinces, British India
Died	16 September 1955(1955-09-16) (aged 81) London, England
Political party	Conservative
Children	Julian, Baron Amery John Amery
Education	Harrow School
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford All Souls College, Oxford
Occupation	Politician and journalist

Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery CH (22 November 1873 – 16 September 1955), also known as L. S. Amery, was a British Conservative politician and journalist. During his career, he was known for his interest in military preparedness, British India and the British Empire and for his opposition to appeasement. After his retirement and death, he was perhaps best known for the remarks he made in the House of Commons on 7 May 1940 during the Norway Debate.

In these remarks, Amery attacked the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, for incompetence in the fight against Hitler's Germany. Many of Amery's Parliamentary contemporaries pointed to this speech as one of the key drivers in the division of the House on the following day, 8 May, which led to Chamberlain being forced out of office and his replacement by Winston Churchill.

Early life and education

Amery was born in Gorakhpur, British India, to an English father and a mother of Hungarian Jewish descent. His father was Charles Frederick Amery (1833–1901), of Lustleigh, Devon, an officer in the Indian Forestry Commission. His mother Elisabeth Johanna Saphir (c. 1841–1908), who was the sister of the orientalist Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner, had come to India from England, where her parents had settled and converted to Protestantism. In 1877 his mother moved back to England from India, and in 1885 she divorced Charles.

In 1887, Amery went to Harrow School, where he was a contemporary of Winston Churchill. Amery represented Harrow at gymnastics and held the top position in examinations for a number of years; he also won prizes and scholarships.

After Harrow he went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he performed well. He gained a First in Classical Moderations in 1894; in literae humaniores ("Greats", i.e. classics) in 1896 and was proxime accessit (runner-up) to the Craven scholar in 1894 and Ouseley scholar in Turkish in 1896. He also won a half-blue in cross-country running.

He was elected a fellow of All Souls College. He could speak Hindi at the age of three years; Amery was born in India and would naturally have acquired the language of his ayah (nanny). He could converse in French, German, Italian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Serbian and Hungarian. Amery was an active freemason.

Journalism

During the Second Boer War Amery was a correspondent for The Times. In 1901, in his articles on the conduct of the war, he attacked the British commander, Sir Redvers Buller, which contributed to Buller's sacking. Amery was the only correspondent to visit Boer forces and was nearly captured with Churchill. Amery later edited and largely wrote The Times History of the South African War (7 vol., 1899–1909).

The Boer War had exposed deficiencies in the British Army and in 1903, Amery wrote The Problem of the Army and advocated its reorganisation. In The Times he penned articles attacking free trade using the pseudonym "Tariff Reformer" and in 1906, he wrote The Fundamental Fallacies of Free Trade. Amery described it as "a theoretical blast of economic heresy" because he argued that the total volume of British trade was less important than the question of whether British trade was making up for the nation's lack of raw materials and food by exporting its surplus manufactured goods, shipping, and financial acumen.

He was a member of the Coefficients dining club of social reformers, set up in 1902 by the Fabian campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

Early political career

Amery turned down the chance to be editor of The Observer in 1908 and The Times in 1912 to concentrate on politics.

Standing as a Liberal Unionist (a party in an electoral alliance with the Conservatives) Amery narrowly failed to win the 1908 Wolverhampton East by-election, by eight votes. In 1911 Amery stood in the 1911 Birmingham South by-election again as a Liberal Unionist, this time unopposed and became a Member of Parliament (MP). One reason that Amery agreed to stand there under the Liberal Unionist label (that party would fully merge with the Conservative Party the following year) was that he had been a longtime political admirer of Joseph Chamberlain and was an ardent supporter of tariff reform and imperial federation. According to A. J. P. Taylor, Amery was a rare Conservative to promote protectionism "as merely the beginning of a planned economy".

First World War

Imperial War Cabinet, 22 Mar 1917 Leo Amery is standing, top row, first on the left

Amery in 1917

During the First World War, Amery's knowledge of Hungarian led to his employment as an Intelligence Officer in the Balkans campaign. Later, as war cabinet secretary in Lloyd George's coalition government, Amery was vested with parliamentary under-secretary like powers, and at the request of Lord Milner, he redrafted the Balfour Declaration.

Amery was greatly concerned with questions of grand strategy, and championed the idea of an "all-red route" to India, calling for Britain to control the sea-lanes to India not only via the Mediterranean-Suez Canal-Red Sea route, but also around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and for Britain to control the main land routes to India in the Middle East as well. In 1917-1918, Amery advocated as war aims the British occupation of Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia, Arabia and the Caucasus. Amery regarded Britain's alliance with Imperial Russia as only temporary, and expected the traditional Anglo-Russian rivalry to resume after the war. By contrast, Amery regarded Soviet Russia after November 1917 as a main threat to Britain's position in Asia. However, the nation that Amery regarded as the most dangerous to the British Empire was Germany because the Reich had the world's second largest economy and its policy of Weltpolitik ("World Politics") was aimed at having Germany replace Britain as the world's dominant power. Amery argued that German attempts to dominate Europe along with the Middle East was intended to serve as basis to make the Reich the world's number one power. In a memo written in April 1917, Amery traced the roots of German imperialism to Prussian imperialism in the 18th century. Amery argued that the Ottoman empire had fallen into the German sphere of influence, and German efforts to push the influence of the Reich to the Persian Gulf were a major threat. Amery expressed much concern about Russia under the Provisional Government which taken over after the February Revolution being defeated, writing that German control of Eastern Europe would be a major step towards allowing Germany to achieve "world power status".

Amery argued that no condition should Britain and its allies return any of the German colonies in Africa and in the Pacific that had been captured by the Allies, arguing that the German colonial empire would allow the Reich to establish submarine bases that would threaten British shipping in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans. Amery also warned that he foresaw the day when technological advances would allow submarines greater range, which led to argue a "mesh" of land, air, and naval bases would need to be established and led to call for British annexation of German East Africa (modern Tanzania), German Southwest Africa (modern Namibia), the German colonies in the Pacific ocean along taking Mesopotamia and Palestine from the Ottoman empire. Amery argued with the Ottoman empire having fallen into the German sphere of influence "and with Germany installed at the gates of Egypt on one side and in East Africa on the other, the Prussian instinct would never rest till the two were linked together, and the great railroad empire became continuous from Hamburg to Lake Nyasa". In Europe, Amery argued that Britain's chief aim was the liberation of Belgium. Towards Britain's allies, he advocated the French should annex Syria and lesser Armenia from the Ottoman empire while Russia should annex greater Armenia and Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Amery took it for granted that both Germany and the Ottoman empire would continue as major powers after the war, and advocated Britain seizing the Middle East in order to provide the best basis for maintaining British power in Asia after the war.

The final draft of the Balfour Declaration issued on 1 November 1917 promising British support for a "Jewish national home" in Palestine was written by Amery. Amery was commissioned by the Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to write a declaration promising the support of H.M. Government for Zionism while also taking into account the objections of the anti-Zionists in the cabinet such as Lord Curzon and Edwin Montagu. Hence the Balfour Declaration as written by Amery only promised a "Jewish national home", not a Jewish state, and likewise stated "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". He also encouraged Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the formation of the Jewish Legion for the British Army in Palestine.

Amery was opposed to the Constitution of the League of Nations because he believed that the world was not equal and so the League, which granted all states equal voting rights, was absurd. He instead believed that the world was tending towards larger and larger states that made up a balanced world of inherently stable units. He contrasted that idea with what he called US President Woodrow Wilson's "facile slogan of self-determination".

First Lord of the Admiralty

After the war, Amery was elected to the newly created seat of Birmingham Sparkbrook in the 1918 general election. From 1919 to 1921 he was Lord Milner's personal secretary at the Colonial Office. He was First Lord of the Admiralty (1922–1924) under Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin. The Washington Naval Conference of 1921 to 1922 resulted in the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, which reduced the strength of the Royal Navy and the naval estimates from over £83,000,000 to £58,000,000. Amery defended the financing of the Singapore Naval Base against both Liberal and Labour attacks.

Colonial Secretary

Amery was Colonial Secretary in Baldwin's government from 1924 to 1929. Amery expanded the role of the Commercial Adviser into the Economic and Financial Advisership under Sir George Schuster. He also created the post of Chief Medical Adviser, under Sir Thomas Stanton, and a range of advisers on education (Sir Hanns Visscher for Tropical Africa), agriculture (Sir Frank Stockdale), a Veterinary Adviser, and a Fisheries Adviser. He also set up the Empire Marketing Board.

A favourite scheme was to develop one or more colonies into white-ruled dominions, with special attention to Southern Rhodesia, Kenya, and Palestine. In Africa, he sought to create an East African Dominion composed of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. The Permanent Mandates Commission, which oversaw Tanganyika (a mandated territory), opposed Amery's plan. The strong opposition by the overwhelming nonwhite populations in Africa, and by the Arabs in Palestine, destroyed his plans. In India, the strong resistance of the Congress movement defeated his hopes for greater integration into the Commonwealth. In Palestine, Amery carried out a policy of "constructive Zionism" of building infrastructure such as paved roads, public sanitation, an hydroelectric grid, and fourth on intended to encourage Jewish immigration to the Palestine Mandate. In the 1920s, Palestine was not the first choice of most European Jews to immigrate to, being seen as a backward, impoverished area, and the policy of public works promoted by Amery was intended to make Palestine into a more attractive place for Jews to go to.

In Malta his name became associated with the royal commission which recommended self-government for the Maltese following the 1919 riots in which four locals and one servicemen were killed. One of the most prominent streets in the resort town of Sliema was named after him.

Out of office

Amery was not invited to join the National Government formed in 1931. He remained in Parliament but joined the boards of several prominent corporations. That was necessary as he had no independent means and had depleted his savings during the First World War and when he was a cabinet minister during the 1920s. Among his directorships were the boards of several German metal fabrication companies (representing British capital invested in the companies), the British Southern Railway, the Gloucester Wagon Company, Marks and Spencer, the famous shipbuilding firm Cammell Laird and the Trust and Loan of Canada. He was also chairman of the Iraq Currency Board.

In the course of his duties as a director of German metal fabrication companies, Amery gained a good understanding of German military potential. Adolf Hitler became alarmed at the situation and ordered a halt to non-German directors. Amery had spent a lot of time in Germany during the 1930s in connection with his work. He was not allowed to send his director's fees out of the country so he took his family on holiday in the Bavarian Alps. He had a lengthy meeting with Hitler on at least one occasion, and he met at length with Czech leader Edvard Beneš, Austrian leaders Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt von Schuschnigg and Italian leader Benito Mussolini.

Opposition to appeasement of Germany

In the debates on the need for an increased effort to rearm British forces, Amery tended to focus on army affairs, with Churchill speaking more about air defence and Roger Keyes talking about naval affairs. Austen Chamberlain was, until his death, a member of the group as well. While there was no question that Churchill was the most prominent and effective, Amery's work was still significant. He was a driving force behind the creation of the Army League, a pressure group designed to keep the needs of the British Army before the public.

In the 1930s Amery, along with Churchill, was a bitter critic of the appeasement of Germany; they often openly attacked their own party. Being a former Colonial and Dominions Secretary, he was very aware of the views of the dominions and strongly opposed returning Germany's colonies, a proposal seriously considered by Neville Chamberlain. Amery's opposition to appeasement was initially based primarily on opposition to the repeated German that the former German colonies in Africa "go home to the Reich". At a meeting of the Central Office of the Conservative and Unionist Party's local associations in June 1936, Amery spoke very strongly against returning any of the German colonies currently held as League of Nations mandates by Great Britain or the Dominions. Referring to pre-1914 colonial deals, Amery stated it had been a mistake to import the "German menace" into Africa and it would be a mistake to do so again, adding that Britain must not "sell white men or black men into Nazi slavery". At the time, it was generally believed that having African colonies to exploit was essential to the workings of European economics, and much of the Nazi claim to the former German African colonies was based on economic grounds. The American Smoot-Hawley act had set off a global trade war with the world broken up into various economic zones as nations imposed record high tariffs, which in particular was used as an argument for why Germany needed it's former colonial empire. In a review of the book Germany's Claims to Colonies by Ferdinand Joelson, Amery wrote "For the moment, there can be no other attitude to the German demand than a purely negative one. The issue should not be treated as open to discussion". However, Amery tempered his opposition to returning the former German colonies by writing if the German government was headed by somebody other than Adolf Hitler, then perhaps "some positive solution to what underlies this demand may be found when the present ferment has worked itself out, and when a more normal outlook has regained ascendency over the great German nation". Amery conceded that the present was an age of "economic nationalism" with nations imposing high tariffs on each other, and that Hitler's claim that the global trade war was hurting the German economy was correct. Amery ended by writing that the system of Imperial preference tariffs, which had turned the British empire into one economic unit, was what allowed Britain to be a great power, and it was up to Hitler to negotiate a similar system to the Imperial preference tariffs with the states of Eastern Europe.

On the rearmament question, Amery was consistent. He advocated a higher level of expenditure, but also a reappraisal of priorities through the creation of a top-level cabinet position to develop overall defence strategy so that the increased expenditures could be spent wisely. He thought that either he or Churchill should be given the post. When the post of Minister for Co-ordination of Defence was finally created and given to a political lightweight, Sir Thomas Inskip, he regarded it as a joke.

Amery differed from Churchill in hoping throughout the 1930s to foster an alliance with fascist Italy to counter the rising strength of Nazi Germany. A united front of Britain, France, and Italy would, he felt, have prevented a German occupation of Austria, especially with Czechoslovakia's support. He thus was for appeasing Italy by tacitly conceding its claims to Ethiopia. A start was made in the so-called Stresa Front of 1935, but he felt that Britain's decision to impose economic sanctions on Italy, for invading Ethiopia in 1936, drove Italy into the arms of Germany.

When Chamberlain announced his flight to Munich to the cheers of the House, Amery was one of only four members who remained seated (the others were Churchill, Anthony Eden, and Harold Nicolson). In 1939, Amery joined Churchill, Lloyd George, Harold Macmillan, Brendan Bracken, Victor Cazalet and most of the Labour Party in voting against the White Paper introduced by the Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald that sharply limited Jewish immigration to the Palestine Mandate. When war came Amery opposed cooperation with the Soviet Union against Germany. He was a lifelong anticommunist.

Second World War

Amery is famous for two moments of high drama in the House of Commons early in the Second World War. On 2 September 1939, Neville Chamberlain spoke in a Commons debate and strongly implied that he was not declaring war on Germany immediately even if it had invaded Poland. Amery was greatly angered, and Chamberlain was felt by many present to be out of touch with the temper of the British people. As Labour Party leader Clement Attlee was absent, Arthur Greenwood stood up in his place and announced that he was speaking for Labour. Amery shouted, "Speak for England, Arthur!" That strongly implied that Chamberlain was not doing so.

The second incident occurred during the Norway Debate in 1940. After the failure of the expedition to Norway, Amery told the House ofCommons: "If we had held Trondheim, the isolated German force at Narvik would have been bound to surrender". After a string of military and naval disasters had been announced, Amery famously attacked Chamberlain's government in a devastating speech, finishing by quoting Oliver Cromwell: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" Lloyd George afterwards told Amery that in 50 years, he had heard few speeches that matched his in sustained power and none with so dramatic a climax. The debate led to 42 Conservative Members of Parliament voting against Chamberlain and 36 abstaining, leading to the downfall of the Conservative government and the formation of a national government under Churchill's premiership. Amery himself noted in his diary that he believed that his speech was one of his best received in the House and that he had made a difference to the outcome of the debate.

Secretary of State for India and Burma

During the Churchill war ministry Amery was Secretary of State for India despite the fact that Churchill and Amery had long disagreed on the fate of India. Amery was disappointed not to be made a member of the small War Cabinet, but he was determined to do all he could in the position he was offered. He was continually frustrated by Churchill's intransigence, and in his memoirs, he recorded that Churchill knew "as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies". In 1942, the cabinet dispatched Stafford Cripps, the leader of the left-wing of the Labour Party, on a mission to India to offer Dominion status for India after the war in exchange for Indian support for the British war effort, but with the additional condition that Britain would concede to the demand of Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Muslim League for a separate nation for Indian Muslims to be called Pakistan. Upon hearing of the Cripps mission, the Viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, asked Amery "Why?" The American President Franklin D. Roosevelt had made it clear to Churchill that he believed that Britain should grant independence to India. Amery seemed to regard the Cripps mission as only useful for its effect on American public opinion as he wrote to Linlithgow in March 1942 that American public opinion would be impressed by "us sending out someone who has always been an extreme Left-Winger and in close touch with Nehru". Amery believed that the Cripps would fail as the British offer of independence for India was also tied to a partition of India, a condition that both he and Churchill knew would be rejected by Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru of the Congress Party who wanted independence without partition. Churchill argued to Roosevelt that Indian Muslims made up the majority of the Indian Army and that India had 100 million Muslims, making it the most populous Muslim community in the world, and Britain could not afford to anger Jinnah of the Muslim League who wanted independence with partition.

When Linlithgow decided to retire as Viceroy in 1943, Amery recommended to Churchill that he appoint either the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden or the Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee as the next Viceroy. Churchill refused under the grounds that he needed both Eden and Attlee in the cabinet. On 8 June 1943, Amery nominated himself as the next Viceroy, writing in a memo to the prime minister of: "...the very special difficulties which a new Viceroy will have to handle. The whole situation in India today depends upon the Viceroy's ability from the onset to manage and impose his personality upon a Council composed mainly of Indians, men of individual ability and goodwill, but easily ratted or turned sour by hesitant or clumsy handling. They are like an Indian elephant, who with a good mahout, will face a charging tiger; if the mahout is stupid, or loses his nerve for a second, nothing can stop the beast from stampeding in terror...a stampede that may wreck the whole fabric of government in India". Amery concluded that since the "very best men" such as Eden and Attlee could not be spared to serve as Viceroy, "as a last resort, I have already offered you myself". Churchill instead chose General Archiblad Wavell as the next Viceroy out of the hope that Wavell would pursue a repressive policy towards Indian demands for independence. Contrary to Churchill's hopes, Wavell proved far more willing than Linlithgow to negotiate with the Indians as Wavell sought a political solution instead of the military solution that Churchill had hoped for. Amery tended to support Wavell's efforts to reach a political solution and consistently spoke in defense of Wavell in cabinet meetings. To replace Wavell who been promoted to Viceroy of India, Churchill wanted to appoint Air Chief Marshal Sir Sholto Douglas as the new commander of South-East Asia Command, a choice vetoed by Roosevelt on the account of Douglas's anti-Americanism. Likewise Admiral Andrew Cunningham declined the offer and at Amery's suggestion, Churchill appointed Admiral Louis Mountbatten as the Southeast Asia Commander.

Amery opposed holding an inquiry for the 1943 Bengal famine, fearing that the political consequences could be "disastrous". In 1944, the Famine Inquiry Commission was held against his advice. Unlike Churchill who had a marked dislike of Gandhi and the Congress Party and favored Jinnah and the Muslim League, Amery had a strong dislike of Jinnah, whom he referred as "the future emperor of Pakistan", charging that Jinnah was only championing the idea of partition of India because creating Pakistan was the only way he ever hope to attain power as the Muslim League as suggested by its name represented only Muslims, and thus could not hope to win an Indian general election. Amery wrote that the concept of Pakistan was "essentially a negation" that would cause a bloodbath if the idea of partition of India was actually executed.

Last years

At the 1945 general election, Amery lost his seat to Labour's Percy Shurmer. He was offered but refused a peerage because it might, when he died, have cut short the political career of his son, Julian, in the House of Commons. However, he was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. In retirement, Amery published a three-volume autobiography My Political Life (1953–1955).

Legacy

Throughout his political career, Amery was an exponent of Imperial unity, as he saw the British Empire as a force for justice and progress in the world. He strongly supported the evolution of the dominions into independent nations bound to Britain by ties of kinship, trade, defence and a common pride in the Empire. He also supported the gradual evolution of the colonies, particularly India, to the same status, unlike Churchill, a free trader, who was less interested in the Empire as such and more in Britain itself as a great power. Amery felt that Britain itself was too weak to maintain its great power position.

Amery was very active in imperial affairs during the 1920s and 1930s. He was in charge of colonial affairs and relations with the dominions from 1924 to 1929. In the 1930s, he was a member of the Empire Industries Association and a chief organiser of the huge rally celebrating the empire at the Royal Albert Hall in 1936 marking the centenary of Joseph Chamberlain's birth. Amery maintained a very busy speaking schedule, with almost 200 engagements between 1936 and 1938, many of them devoted to imperial topics, especially Imperial Preference. Amery distrusted the administration of US President Franklin Roosevelt. He resented American pressure on Canada to oppose imperial free trade. While that pressure was unsuccessful as long as Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Richard Bedford Bennett was in power, after Bennett lost the 1935 election his Liberal successor William Lyon Mackenzie King adopted a more pro-American stance.

Amery wanted to keep the UK and the newly independent British Dominions united by trade behind a common tariff barrier and away from the United States. He viewed American intentions regarding the British Empire with increasingly grave suspicion. He hoped the Labour government elected in 1945 would resist promises of trade liberalisation made by Churchill to the United States during the Second World War. Amery's hopes were partially vindicated when the Attlee government, under intense American pressure, insisted upon the continuation of Imperial/Commonwealth Preference but conceded its more limited scope and promised against further expansion.

Personal life

Plaque celebrating Leo Amery in the church of St John the Baptist in Lustleigh, Devon

Amery was a noted sportsman, especially famous as a mountaineer. He continued to climb well into his sixties, especially in the Swiss Alps but also in Bavaria, Austria, Yugoslavia, Italy and the Canadian Rockies, where Mount Amery is named after him. He enjoyed skiing as well. He was a member of the Alpine Club (serving as its president, 1943–1945) and of the Athenaeum and Carlton Clubs.

He was a Senior Knight Vice President of the Knights of the Round Table.

On 16 November 1910, Amery married Florence Greenwood (1885–1975), daughter of the Canadian barrister John Hamar Greenwood and younger sister of Hamar Greenwood, 1st Viscount Greenwood. She was normally known by the forename Bryddie. They had two sons.

Their elder son, John Amery (1912–1945), became a Nazi sympathizer. During the Second World War he made propaganda broadcasts from Germany, and induced a few British prisoners of war to join the German-controlled British Free Corps. After the war, he was tried for treason, pleaded guilty, and was hanged. His father amended his entry in Who's Who to read "one s[on]", with the editors' permission. The playwright Ronald Harwood, who explored the relationship between Leo and John Amery in his play An English Tragedy (2008), considered it significant to the son's story that the father had apparently concealed his partly-Jewish ancestry.

Amery's younger son, Julian Amery (1919–1996), served first in the Royal Air Force and then the British Army during World War Two, and later became a Conservative politician. He served in the cabinets of Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home as Minister for Aviation (1962–1964) and also held junior ministerial office under Edward Heath. He married Macmillan's daughter Catherine.

Amery is buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist in his father's home village of Lustleigh, and an ornate plaque in commemoration of him is inside the church.

References

• Encyclopædia Britannica, online edition
• L. S. Amery, My Political Life. Volume One: England Before the Storm. 1896–1914 (London: Hutchinson, 1953)
• L. S. Amery, My Political Life. Volume Two: War and Peace. 1914–1929 (London: Hutchinson, 1953)
• L. S. Amery, My Political Life. Volume Three: The Unforgiving Years. 1929–1940 (London: Hutchinson, 1955)
• L. S. Amery, Days of Fresh Air, Being Reminiscences of Outdoor Life (London: Hutchinson Universal Book Club, 1940)
• Crozier, Andrew (1988). Appeasement And Germany's Last Bid For Colonies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781349192557.
• David Faber, Speaking for England: Leo, Julian and John Amery: The Tragedy of a Political Family, (Free Press, 2005) ISBN 0-7432-5688-3
• Fisher, John (Winter 2003). "British Forward Defense in Asia During World War I". Journal of Asian History. 37 (1): 70–102.
• Deborah Lavin, 'Amery, Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett (1873–1955)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2011, accessed 2 June 2011
• Laqueur, Walter (2009). A History of Zionism From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel. New York: Knopf Doubleday. ISBN 9780307530851.
• Mukerjee, Madhusree (2014). "Bengal Famine of 1943: An Appraisal of the Famine Inquiry Commission". Economic and Political Weekly. 49 (11): 71–75.
• Nigel Nicolson (ed.), The Diaries and Letters of Harold Nicolson. Volume II: The War Years, 1939–1945 (New York: Atheneum, 1967)
• Reynolds, David (2004). In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War. New York: Random House. ISBN 0679457437.
• William Rubinstein, 'The secret of Leopold Amery', Historical Research, vol. 73, no. 181 (June 2000), pp. 175–196
• Rubinstein, William (Winter 2004). "Winston Churchill and the Jews". Jewish Historical Studies. 39: 167–176.
• Seidman, Michael (2018). Transatlantic Antifascisms From the Spanish Civil War to the End of World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108417785.
• Wolpert, Stanley (2009). Shameful Flight The Last Years of the British Empire in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195393941.

Further reading

• Amery, L. S. "Imperial Defence and National Policy" . The Empire and the century. London: John Murray. pp. 174–198.
• John Barnes and David Nicholson (eds.), The Leo Amery Diaries. 1896–1929 (London: Hutchinson, 1980)
• John Barnes and David Nicholson (eds.), The Empire at Bay. The Leo Amery Diaries. 1929–1945 (London: Hutchinson, 1987)
• Stephen Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy (London: Routledge, 1984)
• David Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics, 1945–1961 (Oxford University Press, 1971)
• Wm Roger Louis, In the name of God, go! Leo Amery and the British empire in the age of Churchill (W. W. Norton & Co., 1992) online free
• W. R. Louis, 'Leo Amery and the post-war world, 1945–55', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 30 (2002), pp. 71–90
• Philip Williamson, National Crisis and National Government: British Politics, the Economy and Empire, 1926–1932 (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Publications

• Leo Amery, The Problem of the Army (1903) Link.
• Leo Amery, Fundamental Fallacies of Free Trade (1906) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1900 (Vol I) (1900) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1900 (Vol II) (1902) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1900 (Vol III) (1905) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1902 (Vol IV) (1906) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1902 (Vol V) (1907) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1902 (Vol VI) (1909) Link.
• Leo Amery, 'The Times' History of the war in South Africa, 1899–1902 (Vol VII) (1909) Link.
• Leo Amery, The Great Question: Tariff Reform or Free Trade? (1909) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, Union and Strength (1912) Link.
• Leo Amery, The Empire in the New Era (1928) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, Empire and Prosperity (1930) short work Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, A Plan of Action (1932) Link.
• Leo Amery, The Stranger of the Ulysses (1934) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, The Forward View (1935) Link.
• Leo Amery, The Odyssey: Presidential address delivered to the Classical association (1936) short work Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, The German Colonial Claim (1939) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, Days of Fresh Air (1939) Link.
• Leo Amery, India and Freedom (1942) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, The Framework for the Future (1944) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, The Washington Loan Agreements (1945) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, In the Rain and the Sun (1946) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, Thoughts on the Constitution (1947) Link.
• Leo Amery, The Elizabethan Spirit (1948) short work Link to library source
• Leo Amery, The Awakening: Our Present Crisis and the Way Out (1948) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, Thought and Language (1949) short work Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, My Political Life, Volume I, England Before the Storm, 1896–1914 (1953) Link.
• Leo Amery, My Political Life, Volume II, War and Peace, 1914–1929 (1953) Link.
• Leo Amery, My Political Life, Volume III, The Unforgiving Years, 1929–1940 (1955) Link.
• Leo Amery, A Balanced Economy (1954) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, The Leo Amery diaries 1896–1929 (Vol I) (1980) Link to library source.
• Leo Amery, The Empire at bay: the Leo Amery diaries 1929–1945 (Vol II) (1988) Link to library source.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Leo Amery
• "Archival material relating to Leo Amery". UK National Archives.
• Newspaper clippings about Leo Amery in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW