Templewood, Samuel John Gurney Hoare, 1st Viscount, British And Irish History, Biographies

Related Category: British And Irish History, Biographies

Templewood, Samuel John Gurney Hoare, 1st Viscount 1880–1959, British statesman. He entered parliament as a Conservative in 1910, served (1922–24, 1924–29) as secretary of state for air, and in 1931 became secretary of state for India. He piloted through Parliament the Government of India Act (1935), providing limited home rule for India. Appointed foreign secretary in 1935, Hoare was faced with the task of forestalling the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. He made a speech before the League of Nations in favor of collective security, but later he and Pierre Laval of France secretly agreed (Dec., 1935) on a plan of settlement by which a large portion of Ethiopia would have been surrendered to Italian control. The plan, when leaked to the press, raised a storm of protest in Great Britain, and Hoare resigned. He was henceforth labeled an appeaser. Hoare reentered (1936) the cabinet as first lord of the admiralty and was home secretary from 1937 to 1939. He was made secretary for air (1940) and served as special ambassador to Spain (1940–44), with the task of keeping that country neutral in World War II. He was raised to the peerage in 1944. His numerous writings include Nine Troubled Years (1954).

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