Arthur Blaikie Purvis

Purvis was born in London to a Scottish father and was educated at the Tottenham Grammar School.

[1] In 1936, he was appointed by William Lyon Mackenzie King to chair the National Employment Commission.

[1] In June 1940, when France was on the verge of concluding an armistice with Germany, Purvis arranged to take over all the pending French weapons contracts in the United States at the cost of $612 million.

Purvis' contemporaries held him in high regard: Henry Morgenthau Jr. wrote that Purvis was "the ablest British representative in Washington but one of the rarest persons I have ever known",[1] while Jean Monnet wrote that he "served the Allied war effort magnificently until his death".

[4] On his death, Winston Churchill wrote that "Purvis was a grievous loss, as he held so many British, American, and Canadian threads in his hands".