He who writes his memoirs last laughs best. Lord Beaverbrook has taken all the going, good or rough, in politics, tried tycoon-or typhoon-ship in the press, survived ministry in two wars, and now writes the history of his time as never writ before.
Modern biographers spend years gathering and garbling the diaries and letters of the dead. They cement their dull bricks with the gossip and guesses of the past. Beaverbrook has no need of such. He has most of the answers and some of the best stories in any portfolio. He has collected the records himself. He saw history as close of quarters as Thucydides, whose impartial balance he lacks. Great journalists die with their papers and die forever. Beaverbrook has found a means of immortality by revealing the secret history intended for future historians.
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