He served in the Grenadier Guards in the First World War, where he met Winston Churchill, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross.

He also became chairman of the London Tin Corporation and joined the boards of a number of foreign companies, including that of the German firm Metallgesellschaft.

He set about exploiting his extensive network of personal contacts and his intimate knowledge of the mining industry in order to secure for Britain vital supplies of metals at highly advantageous rates.

His unconventional methods caused some anxiety at the Treasury, but over the course of the war they saved Britain a substantial amount of money.After the Conservative Party left office in 1945, Lyttelton became the chairman of Associated Electrical Industries.

He entered Winston Churchill's war coalition as President of the Board of Trade in 1940, a post he held until 1941, and then served as Minister-Resident for the Middle East from 1941 to 1942, and as Minister of Production from 1942 to 1945.

Lyttelton was strongly anti-communist and in 1953 said "Her Majesty's Government are not prepared to tolerate the setting up of Communist states in the British Commonwealth".

[6] In 1948, the 5th Earl Nelson sold Trafalgar Park, Wiltshire, to John Osborne, 11th Duke of Leeds, whose brother-in-law Oliver Lyttelton, 1st Viscount Chandos, lived there while he was an MP.

His parents had been active campaigners for its development, and the Lyttelton Theatre, part of the National's South Bank complex, was named after him.

During Laurence Olivier's tenure as director of the National, Chandos was a central figure in the controversy over a proposed production of Rolf Hochhuth's Soldiers.