File 061 - Sir S. Hoare

Sir Samuel John Gurney Hoare, 1st Viscount Templewood, was born on February 24, 1880, in London, England.

He was a British Conservative politician and author. He was educated at Harrow School and New College, Oxford (B.A., 1903; M.A., 1910) and entered Parliament for Chelsea in 1910, retaining the constituency until 1944. During World War I, Hoare was a military officer, serving in missions to Russia (1916–1917) and Italy (1917–1918). After the war, in 1922, he became Secretary of State, holding the post until 1929 and helping to build Britain’s Royal Air Force. Hoare and Lady Maud travelled by air whenever possible, including the first civilian flight to India in 1927. By 1929, there were regular scheduled routes to India and Cape Town. From 1931 to 1935, as Secretary of State for India, he had the immense task of developing a parliamentary pilot of the bill, which gave India limited home rule and became the Government of India Act 1935. In 1935, he became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. After the outbreak of the Italo–Ethiopian War, he developed with Pierre Laval of France the so-called Hoare–Laval Plan for the partition of Ethiopian land between Italy and Ethiopia (then Abyssinia). The proposal drew immediate and widespread denunciation, forcing Hoare’s resignation on December 18, 1935. In 1936, he returned to the Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty, then served as Home Secretary from 1937 to 1939 and was again briefly Secretary of State for Air in 1940. He was part of the inner council that developed the Munich Pact in 1938 and became one of its staunchest defenders, further marking him as an appeaser, to the ultimate damage of his reputation. He also served as British ambassador to Spain from 1940 to 1944. On his retirement in 1944, he was made Viscount Templewood of Chelsea. He held several foreign honours, e.g., Grand Cross of the Order of the White Lion of Czechoslovakia, Grand Cross of the Order of the Polar Star of Sweden, Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog of Denmark, and Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau of the Netherlands. He authored several books, e.g., "India by Air" (1927), “The Fourth Seal” (1930), “Ambassador on Special Mission” (1946), “The Unbroken Thread” (1949), “The Shadow of the Gallows” (1951), “Nine Troubled Years” (1954), and “Empire of the Air” (1957).

In 1909, he married Lady Maud Lygon (1882–1962). He died on May 7, 1959, in London, England.