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Extraordinary Canadians
Lord Beaverbrook
Press baron, entrepreneur, art collector, and wartime minister in Churchill's cabinet, Max Aitken was a colonial Canadian extraordinaire. Rising from a hardscrabble childhood in New Brunswick, he became a millionaire at age 25, earned the title of Lord Beaverbrook at 38, and by age 40 was the most influential newspaperman in the world. Fiercely loyal to the British Empire, he was nonetheless patronized by London's upper class, whose country he worked tirelessly to protect during World War II. David Adams Richards, one of Canada's preeminent novelists, celebrates Beaverbrook's heroic achievements in this perceptive interpretive biography.
190 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2008
3 people are currently reading
52 people want to read
About the author
David Adams Richards
46 books204 followersDavid Adams Richards (born 17 October 1950) is a Canadian novelist, essayist, screenwriter and poet.
Born in Newcastle, New Brunswick, Richards left St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, one course shy of completing a B.A. Richards has been a writer-in-residence at various universities and colleges across Canada, including the University of New Brunswick.
Richards has received numerous awards including 2 Gemini Awards for scriptwriting for Small Gifts and "For Those Who Hunt The Wounded Down", the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in the Arts, and the Canadian Authors Association Award for his novel Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace. Richards is one of only three writers to have won in both the fiction and non-fiction categories of the Governor General's Award. He won the 1988 fiction award for Nights Below Station Street and the 1998 non-fiction award for Lines on the Water: A Fisherman's Life on the Miramichi. He was also a co-winner of the 2000 Giller Prize for Mercy Among the Children.
In 1971, he married the former Peggy MacIntyre. They have two sons, John Thomas and Anton Richards, and currently reside in Toronto.
John Thomas was born in 1989 in Saint John, New Brunswick.
The Writers' Federation of New Brunswick administers an annual David Adams Richards Award for Fiction.
Richards' papers are currently housed at the University of New Brunswick.
Born in Newcastle, New Brunswick, Richards left St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, one course shy of completing a B.A. Richards has been a writer-in-residence at various universities and colleges across Canada, including the University of New Brunswick.
Richards has received numerous awards including 2 Gemini Awards for scriptwriting for Small Gifts and "For Those Who Hunt The Wounded Down", the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in the Arts, and the Canadian Authors Association Award for his novel Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace. Richards is one of only three writers to have won in both the fiction and non-fiction categories of the Governor General's Award. He won the 1988 fiction award for Nights Below Station Street and the 1998 non-fiction award for Lines on the Water: A Fisherman's Life on the Miramichi. He was also a co-winner of the 2000 Giller Prize for Mercy Among the Children.
In 1971, he married the former Peggy MacIntyre. They have two sons, John Thomas and Anton Richards, and currently reside in Toronto.
John Thomas was born in 1989 in Saint John, New Brunswick.
The Writers' Federation of New Brunswick administers an annual David Adams Richards Award for Fiction.
Richards' papers are currently housed at the University of New Brunswick.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 19, 2012
David Adams Richards
The other night, I got an email from the local business development agency advising me that an announcement for my book launch was now listed in a municipal events-calendar. I clicked the link to see what it looked like and noticed that, in 38 minutes, there was a scheduled reading for Canadian author David Adams Richards at the public library. I jumped in the shower, jumped in my car, and broke the speed-limit.
David Adams Richards is easily the most famous writer to ever emerge from my native New Brunswick. He’s penned poetry, plays, non-fiction, and – most notably – fiction, including 14 novels, the latest Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul. He’s won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Governor General’s Award, and the esteemed Giller Prize, Canada’s top literary honour. He was supposed to speak in front of a Canadian-literature class I took in high school, but had previous commitments. In university, I read Richards’s first book, The Coming of Winter, but didn’t quite get it. When I lived in Taipei, I found a copy of his Mercy Among the Children and was drawn in deeply, transported back to my quirky and rural home province. Mercy is a good novel (it’s the one that won him the Giller), and I’ve been meaning to explore others, but there are so many books and so little time.
Richards’s stories are often set in the Miramichi, one of New Brunswick’s four main cities. Richards employs stark realism tinged with dark themes. Characters are raw and real and converse in the vernacular. There’s crime, clannishness, ostracism, hypocrisy, prejudice, and poverty. The duplicity of human society features prominently, as does ambiguity; it may be obvious who the victim is, but Richards’s heroes are harder to spot.
At the library, 30 people were seated quietly. Richards was standing off to the side, looking apprehensive or bored. There he was: a Canadian literary giant. Why wasn’t anyone talking to him?
“Excuse me. Do you have a pen?” I asked.
“Ah, no,” he said, patting his pockets, “but there’s one on the table.”
The table was laid out with his books, including his Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul. I grabbed the pen, signed my own book, and presented it to him. I thought he might wince, supply an insincere ‘Thanks,’ and toss it aside the instant I took my leave, but he seemed genuinely interested.
“You wrote this?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re from Saint John?”
“Yes. I read your Mercy Among the Children when I was living in Taiwan, and really enjoyed it.”
“You read it in Chinese?”
“No, in English.”
“Because that one was translated into Chinese. On the mainland, though.”
“Did it sell?”
“I have no idea, but I remember the guy who did it. He was very nice. He wrote me a couple times to ask what things were, you know, to explain words so he could translate them. I remember him asking what a marshmallow was and I had to explain the word ‘Legion.’ I suppose they wouldn’t have Legions in China. Whether it was translated well or not, I don’t know. The English version is that thick (two inches), the German edition that thick (three inches), but the Chinese translation is only about that thick (one inch).” Richards shrugged. “His English wasn’t perfect, but he was really nice.”
It was nearing that time, so I sat down, and the female MC introduced Mr. Richards – at length. But while she was talking, an interesting thing occurred. The author wasn’t really listening. Rather, he was reading my book. At one point, I heard him say to himself, “This is really interesting.” When it was time to take the stand, he took my book and his book to the podium. He set my book down and patted it. He looked at me and said, earnestly, “Thank you for the book.” Then he began to read.
The reading was followed by a Q&A. My questions, the first, were generic: “In fiction, do you know where you’re going? Do you have it planned, or just a rough idea?” I imagine he’s been asked that a thousand times. I should have asked something interesting like, “Is the hypocrisy of human society something you obsess about?” or “How much of wanting to be a writer was motivated by revenge?” Many writers are idealists and feel the need to comment on corruption and perversion. And it’s my theory that, for male writers at least, revenge is a key motivator, especially when starting out.
Writers hope to show every critic, every pretentious academic, every teacher who said, ‘Sorry, you don’t have it,’ that they do have it. Writers catalogue slights and conjure them when they need motivation. Mordecai Richler admitted this. So has Paul Theroux. In The Forest for the Trees, by Betsey Lerner, a book about writing and the business of writing, written by a publishing-industry insider for aspiring writers, the author talks about what motivates authors, and revenge is right up there with need-to-be-heard.
The revenge question was the one I should have posed, but no, I asked the most limp-wristed question imaginable.
In addition to novels, and in true New Brunswick fashion, Richards has penned books on hockey, fishing, and hunting. He recently wrote God Is, about his Catholic faith. Reportedly, this raised the collective eyebrow of the Canadian literary community, with Richards claiming he’s now something of a pariah. I’m not a Christian, so God Is is not a book for me (but neither are books like God is Not Great, though I consider Christopher Hitchens an important essayist and polemicist), but I found Richards’s reasons for writing such a book, and the related advice he gave, interesting.
“Write what you know,” he said. “Write what you want to. Don’t censor yourself. Don’t curb your opinions to fit with someone else’s, which is what a lot of writers do. At some point, someone is going to tell you you’re wrong anyway, so you may as well write what you believe.”
It was the final idea I’d never thought of before: people are going to call you down anyway, so why even begin to compromise? That’s bloody good advice. Who cares about that cacophonous clang from the peanut gallery? Write for yourself.
Writers are often outsiders, but Richards seems an outsider to other writers, a role he acknowledges and appears to revel in (see revenge). He talked about how some time after he’d won the Giller, he was kicked out of a Toronto bookstore because of his appearance, and that he frightened the receptionist at his Toronto publisher because he was dressed like a lumberjack. Along with his art-imitating-life approach to writing, this is part of the reason I like Mr. Richards. He’s an anti-intellectual intellectual.
Richards also discussed the difficulty of getting published: you approach a publisher who tells you need an agent. An agent asks you who your publisher is. He then relayed a couple of anecdotes about his younger days. His debut novel, the one I read in high school, was edited by the publisher’s son, though Richards insisted all the bits the kid “gutted” be stuffed back in!
The Q&A was followed by a signing, and the book I bought was one in the Penguin Books Extraordinary Canadians series. I’d read the series’ Mordecai Richler biography by M.G. Vassanji and had liked it, so I thought I’d check out Richards’s book on Lord Beaverbrook, a.k.a. Max Aitkin (1879-1964), a New Brunswick newspaper baron and the first lord of Fleet Street.
When I was a kid, I played hockey at the Lord Beaverbrook Arena and when I returned to Canada I worked briefly in a building called the Beaverbrook House. I’d been meaning to read about Beaverbrook anyway and knew of Richards’s book, so why not buy a signed copy from the writer himself?
Beaverbrook was a real life Duddy Kravitz. He started his first newspaper at the age of 13, sold bonds door to door, and moved to Montreal to work on the stock exchange. He had a stab at law in Saint John, but then moved to England where he got into politics and built a chain of newspapers. He once owned Rolls Royce. He bought his way into the House of Lords, and was a friend of Rudyard Kipling and Winston Churchill. Churchill made him a member of the wartime cabinet and put him charge of aircraft (Spitfire) production.
Beaverbrook cut an intriguing figure: a money man riddled with contradictions. He was both decent and deceitful, an uncouth colonial and a calculating aristocrat. Though he loved Britain and her empire, it was an unrequited adoration. But his efforts in Spitfire production made him a hero. Richards’s heroes are not always easy spot.
Despite all his success, Lord Beaverbrook, was – above all – an outsider. Who better than Richards, who grew up less than two blocks from the man, to write about him?
The other night, I got an email from the local business development agency advising me that an announcement for my book launch was now listed in a municipal events-calendar. I clicked the link to see what it looked like and noticed that, in 38 minutes, there was a scheduled reading for Canadian author David Adams Richards at the public library. I jumped in the shower, jumped in my car, and broke the speed-limit.
David Adams Richards is easily the most famous writer to ever emerge from my native New Brunswick. He’s penned poetry, plays, non-fiction, and – most notably – fiction, including 14 novels, the latest Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul. He’s won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Governor General’s Award, and the esteemed Giller Prize, Canada’s top literary honour. He was supposed to speak in front of a Canadian-literature class I took in high school, but had previous commitments. In university, I read Richards’s first book, The Coming of Winter, but didn’t quite get it. When I lived in Taipei, I found a copy of his Mercy Among the Children and was drawn in deeply, transported back to my quirky and rural home province. Mercy is a good novel (it’s the one that won him the Giller), and I’ve been meaning to explore others, but there are so many books and so little time.
Richards’s stories are often set in the Miramichi, one of New Brunswick’s four main cities. Richards employs stark realism tinged with dark themes. Characters are raw and real and converse in the vernacular. There’s crime, clannishness, ostracism, hypocrisy, prejudice, and poverty. The duplicity of human society features prominently, as does ambiguity; it may be obvious who the victim is, but Richards’s heroes are harder to spot.
At the library, 30 people were seated quietly. Richards was standing off to the side, looking apprehensive or bored. There he was: a Canadian literary giant. Why wasn’t anyone talking to him?
“Excuse me. Do you have a pen?” I asked.
“Ah, no,” he said, patting his pockets, “but there’s one on the table.”
The table was laid out with his books, including his Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul. I grabbed the pen, signed my own book, and presented it to him. I thought he might wince, supply an insincere ‘Thanks,’ and toss it aside the instant I took my leave, but he seemed genuinely interested.
“You wrote this?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re from Saint John?”
“Yes. I read your Mercy Among the Children when I was living in Taiwan, and really enjoyed it.”
“You read it in Chinese?”
“No, in English.”
“Because that one was translated into Chinese. On the mainland, though.”
“Did it sell?”
“I have no idea, but I remember the guy who did it. He was very nice. He wrote me a couple times to ask what things were, you know, to explain words so he could translate them. I remember him asking what a marshmallow was and I had to explain the word ‘Legion.’ I suppose they wouldn’t have Legions in China. Whether it was translated well or not, I don’t know. The English version is that thick (two inches), the German edition that thick (three inches), but the Chinese translation is only about that thick (one inch).” Richards shrugged. “His English wasn’t perfect, but he was really nice.”
It was nearing that time, so I sat down, and the female MC introduced Mr. Richards – at length. But while she was talking, an interesting thing occurred. The author wasn’t really listening. Rather, he was reading my book. At one point, I heard him say to himself, “This is really interesting.” When it was time to take the stand, he took my book and his book to the podium. He set my book down and patted it. He looked at me and said, earnestly, “Thank you for the book.” Then he began to read.
The reading was followed by a Q&A. My questions, the first, were generic: “In fiction, do you know where you’re going? Do you have it planned, or just a rough idea?” I imagine he’s been asked that a thousand times. I should have asked something interesting like, “Is the hypocrisy of human society something you obsess about?” or “How much of wanting to be a writer was motivated by revenge?” Many writers are idealists and feel the need to comment on corruption and perversion. And it’s my theory that, for male writers at least, revenge is a key motivator, especially when starting out.
Writers hope to show every critic, every pretentious academic, every teacher who said, ‘Sorry, you don’t have it,’ that they do have it. Writers catalogue slights and conjure them when they need motivation. Mordecai Richler admitted this. So has Paul Theroux. In The Forest for the Trees, by Betsey Lerner, a book about writing and the business of writing, written by a publishing-industry insider for aspiring writers, the author talks about what motivates authors, and revenge is right up there with need-to-be-heard.
The revenge question was the one I should have posed, but no, I asked the most limp-wristed question imaginable.
In addition to novels, and in true New Brunswick fashion, Richards has penned books on hockey, fishing, and hunting. He recently wrote God Is, about his Catholic faith. Reportedly, this raised the collective eyebrow of the Canadian literary community, with Richards claiming he’s now something of a pariah. I’m not a Christian, so God Is is not a book for me (but neither are books like God is Not Great, though I consider Christopher Hitchens an important essayist and polemicist), but I found Richards’s reasons for writing such a book, and the related advice he gave, interesting.
“Write what you know,” he said. “Write what you want to. Don’t censor yourself. Don’t curb your opinions to fit with someone else’s, which is what a lot of writers do. At some point, someone is going to tell you you’re wrong anyway, so you may as well write what you believe.”
It was the final idea I’d never thought of before: people are going to call you down anyway, so why even begin to compromise? That’s bloody good advice. Who cares about that cacophonous clang from the peanut gallery? Write for yourself.
Writers are often outsiders, but Richards seems an outsider to other writers, a role he acknowledges and appears to revel in (see revenge). He talked about how some time after he’d won the Giller, he was kicked out of a Toronto bookstore because of his appearance, and that he frightened the receptionist at his Toronto publisher because he was dressed like a lumberjack. Along with his art-imitating-life approach to writing, this is part of the reason I like Mr. Richards. He’s an anti-intellectual intellectual.
Richards also discussed the difficulty of getting published: you approach a publisher who tells you need an agent. An agent asks you who your publisher is. He then relayed a couple of anecdotes about his younger days. His debut novel, the one I read in high school, was edited by the publisher’s son, though Richards insisted all the bits the kid “gutted” be stuffed back in!
The Q&A was followed by a signing, and the book I bought was one in the Penguin Books Extraordinary Canadians series. I’d read the series’ Mordecai Richler biography by M.G. Vassanji and had liked it, so I thought I’d check out Richards’s book on Lord Beaverbrook, a.k.a. Max Aitkin (1879-1964), a New Brunswick newspaper baron and the first lord of Fleet Street.
When I was a kid, I played hockey at the Lord Beaverbrook Arena and when I returned to Canada I worked briefly in a building called the Beaverbrook House. I’d been meaning to read about Beaverbrook anyway and knew of Richards’s book, so why not buy a signed copy from the writer himself?
Beaverbrook was a real life Duddy Kravitz. He started his first newspaper at the age of 13, sold bonds door to door, and moved to Montreal to work on the stock exchange. He had a stab at law in Saint John, but then moved to England where he got into politics and built a chain of newspapers. He once owned Rolls Royce. He bought his way into the House of Lords, and was a friend of Rudyard Kipling and Winston Churchill. Churchill made him a member of the wartime cabinet and put him charge of aircraft (Spitfire) production.
Beaverbrook cut an intriguing figure: a money man riddled with contradictions. He was both decent and deceitful, an uncouth colonial and a calculating aristocrat. Though he loved Britain and her empire, it was an unrequited adoration. But his efforts in Spitfire production made him a hero. Richards’s heroes are not always easy spot.
Despite all his success, Lord Beaverbrook, was – above all – an outsider. Who better than Richards, who grew up less than two blocks from the man, to write about him?
December 22, 2025
Very interesting exploration of a New Brunswicker I knew nothing about. I liked exploring the changing world of British politics from WW1-WW2. Some really interesting personas at this time.
July 22, 2018
Lord Beaverbrook is the only Canadian to be mentioned in Season 2 of The Crown on Netflix (in a scene where the former King Edward VIII lists his friends in Britain) and author David Adams Richards observes that he was one of the most important and influential Canadians in 20th century global affairs. This short biography provides an interesting and enthusiastic overview of his life, achievements and shortcomings. The author's opinions, however, sometimes overwhelm the narrative. Both Richards and Beaverbrook grew up in the same town in New Brunswick and Richards sometimes often attributes opinions to Beaverbrook based entirely on his own experiences of the culture of small town New Brunswick. A good read but the author's asides about how things are done in Miramichi are sometimes distracting from the overall biography.
August 15, 2017
Reading this little biography, some might believe that David Adams Richards is a Beaverbrook apologist...but he's playing a more subtle game. In this extremely concise read, he never once ignores Beaverbrook's mistakes -- they are all there, side-by-side with his triumphs. Instead, Richards is challenging readers to come to their own conclusions; the only agenda he is determined to push is that Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, deserves more coverage as a part of Canadian history than he currently receives. After reading this book, I have no counter-argument to make.
February 28, 2012
I really enjoyed this book. It was a pleasure learning about a famous New Brunswicker, where I am from, Lord Beaverbrook. When I started reading this I thought I new a little bit about the man but found out that I new very little. Every Canadian should read this series excited to read another one.
January 22, 2022
One interesting Canadian who did what he wanted when he wanted. His accomplishments were only as extensive as others would allow. He knew everybody who was anybody. He tried to leave the world a better place.
November 15, 2017
Enjoyable quick read.
May 13, 2022
well written! i enjoyed learning more about canadian history but hate the guy
October 25, 2022
An OK read. Beaverbrook at one time was likely the most famous and influential Canadian and this book captures that. It also ends well, but other than that it is rather light.
March 11, 2015
Do you know who Lord Beaverbrook is? Have you ever heard of Max Aitken? Perhaps if you are from east you do? What a fascinating person. I came across him in the novel Angel Walk and wanted to understand more why he was in that novel - makes much more sense now! This is the first book in the Extraordinary Canadian Series that I've read. It is a little light, especially in explaining what must have been some pretty complex politicking, but I also suspect the author had limitations on how long of a book he could write. David Adams Richards for the most part writes about him in a sympathetic way and it is true that for all his accomplishments he is a rather unknown and uncelebrated Canadian. Now if I could just get through one of David Adams Richards novels....
March 11, 2011
I liked this one. Out of the series, he is the only figure a little bad yet a little good. It's interesting he was included but interesting that his contribution to Canada was an entreprenurial one in the sense of making things happen in the critical moment. I particularly liked the boyhood turned man analogy, and the stages of growth in his character. Pretty good book.
October 30, 2015
Lord Beaverbrook was a player. A New Brunswicker like me, he was the original outsider, and yet he made himself indispensable to the British Government and especially Churchill. adams weaves a fascinating biography - one Miramichi boy to another - and takes us along on a great historical and sociological ride.
September 4, 2012
Always love a good book about home.
April 19, 2013
Interesting and short read. It was fun. However, it is full of both speculation and hyperbole, which gives the book a mysterious style and adds to the reading pleasure.
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February 19, 2016interesting and well written
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews