[8] At Cambridge, he met Sydney Courtauld; after they married in 1926, his father-in-law awarded him an income of £5,000 a year after tax for life, which was comparable to a Cabinet Minister's salary and gave him the financial freedom to pursue a political career.

[16] During the Sudeten Crisis, he was attending a League of Nations meeting in Geneva but strongly supported Chamberlain's trip to Berchtesgaden on 16 September, even if it meant sacrificing Czechoslovakia in the interests of peace.

[23] The evidence suggests Butler did not support Halifax's new policy of attempting to deter further German aggression by pledging to go to war to defend Poland and other Eastern European countries.

[11] Although he later held many senior Cabinet positions, by the time of Suez in 1956, his past, coupled with his lack of personal military experience, damaged his reputation in the eyes of the younger generation of Conservative MPs, many of whom were Second World War veterans.

[31] Patrick Cosgrave argues, "Butler did not merely go along with appeasement he waxed hard, long and enthusiastic for it, and there is very little evidence... he took the slightest interest in the rearmament programme to which he devotes such emphasis in his memoirs".

[11][40][41] Prytz later reported to Stockholm that Butler had declared British policy must be determined by "common sense not bravado" and that had "assured me that no opportunity for reaching a compromise (peace) would be neglected" if there were reasonable conditions.

Butler, who was lucky not to be sacked, made a four-page handwritten reply the same day that claimed that he had kept to the official British line and had said "nothing definite or specific that I would wish to withdraw", but he offered to resign.

[11][40][42] On 28 June, after being shown Churchill's letter, Butler wrote to Halifax and have an unconvincing explanation, which he later repeated in his memoirs, that by "common sense not bravado", he had been pushing the official line that there could be no peace until Germany had disgorged its conquests.

[63] Plans for 1943 were scuppered by a letter to The Times from Hinsley stressing Franklin Roosevelt's commitment to freedom of conscience and arguing that Catholic schools should not be bullied by the state, as they often provided for the poorest inner-city communities.

[65][66] With Churchill's leadership being questioned after recent reverses in the Far East and North Africa, Ivor Bulmer-Thomas (14 August 1942) commented that some Conservative MPs saw Butler, rather than Eden, as a potential successor.

[68] Butler lobbied John Anderson, Kingsley Wood and Ernest Bevin for an education bill in 1943,[69] and by the end of 1942, a draft White paper was proceeding through the Lord President's Committee.

[70][71] By March 1943, with an Allied victory seeming only a matter of time, Churchill began to support an education bill in 1944 and was aware that he needed to promise postwar improvements and that reforming schools would be cheaper than implementing the Beveridge Report.

[47] At the second reading in March 1944, Thelma Cazalet-Keir, part of Quintin Hogg's Tory Reform Committee, proposed two amendments, one to raise the school leaving age to 16 by 1951 and another demanding equal pay for women teachers.

In February 1955, he increased the bank rate and restored hire purchase restrictions, and the 1955 budget reduced income tax by 6d, which was allegedly based on faulty Treasury statistics.

[87] [c] On the evening of 6 November 1956, after the British ceasefire had been announced, Butler was observed to be "smiling broadly" on the front bench and astonished some Conservatives by saying that he "would not hesitate to convey" to the absent prime minister the concerns expressed by Gaitskell.

Butler, unlike Macmillan, preferred the assessments of the Chief Whip (Edward Heath) and Chairman of the Party (Oliver Poole), who believed that Eden could survive as prime minister until the summer recess if his health held up.

Julian Amery, who was not a member of the Cabinet at the time, alleged that Salisbury interviewed ministers in the order of their loyalty to Macmillan and kept the tally in plain view on the table so that waverers would be more inclined to plump for the winning candidate.

He said "savage" things to Derek Marks of the Daily Express, who protected Butler's reputation by not printing them and years later told Alistair Horne, Macmillan's biographer that he "could not understand" why he had been passed over after "picking up the pieces" after Suez.

[125] Richard Crossman wrote in his diary (11 January), "This whole operation has been conducted from the top by a very few people with great speed and skill, so that Butler was outflanked and compelled to surrender almost as quickly as the Egyptians at Sinai".

During the crisis caused by Profumo affair, Butler was asked by Martin Redmayne, the Conservative Chief Whip, and Lord Poole, Party Chairman, if he would in principle serve in a Maudling government.

[155] Back in London, Macmillan, from his hospital bed, proposed on 14 October a four-track consultation to "take soundings" (of the opinions of Cabinet, MPs, peers and leading members of the party organisation in the country) and to select a consensus leader through the "customary processes".

[157][158] Current ministers who visited Macmillan in hospital included Duncan Sandys, who advised for Home not as a compromise but on his own merits, and Edward Heath who felt that Butler would be uninspiring and had not emerged as a natural and undisputed successor in the way that he should have.

[162] Frederick Errol, President of the Board of Trade, had been told by Chief Whip Martin Redmayne at Blackpool that the succession had been already arranged for Home,[162] as had John Boyd-Carpenter, a Butler supporter, on 9 October.

[174] The next morning (19 October), Butler and then Maudling agreed to serve under Home, who returned to the Palace to report that he could "form a government" and to "kiss hands", i.e. formally accept appointment as prime minister.

[180] Macmillan, trying to control events from his sickbed, had urged Home to appoint Heath as Foreign Secretary but conceded that allowing Butler to have the position that he had always coveted might be a necessary price for his agreeing to serve.

[184] Butler's only major foreign trip was to Washington in late March 1964, where US President Lyndon Johnson complained about the sale of British-made buses to Castro-controlled Cuba, which was under a US trade embargo.

[195] Instead Butler recommended that unlike previous members of the Royal Family, Prince Charles live in College, study for a normal degree and sit Finals like any other undergraduate.

He scaled back his public appearances after an incident at the Booker Prize awards in London in December 1973, at which he told ill-judged anti-Semitic jokes, which caused grave offence to the publisher George Weidenfeld.

[223] His obituary in The Times in 1982 called him "the creator of the modern educational system, the key-figure in the revival of post-war Conservatism, arguably the most successful chancellor since the war and unquestionably a Home Secretary of reforming zeal".

He argues that he was indecisive as chancellor, and recounts how during the Profumo Affair he once telephoned a junior civil servant to ask what he should do, as well as occasions on which he was unable to decide on the menu for an official lunch, or whether to attend a reception at the Moroccan Embassy.