People of the Revolution and the USSR

United Kingdom state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1859–1925 ○ Natural death

Conservative viceroy of India and foreign secretary who gave his name to the Curzon Line and led the Allies at Lausanne

Born into an aristocratic Derbyshire family and educated at Eton and Oxford, he entered Parliament in 1885 and wrote travel books warning of a Russian threat to India. As Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905 he pursued administrative reform, but his 1905 partition of Bengal was criticised as an attempt to divide Bengali nationalism, and a major famine coincided with his tenure. In the First World War he served in Lloyd George’s war cabinet; appointed Foreign Secretary in October 1919, he gave his name to the proposed Soviet-Polish boundary, the Curzon Line. He designed the Treaty of Sèvres and, as chief Allied negotiator at Lausanne in 1922, settled the borders of Turkey. Passed over for prime minister in 1923, he died in 1925.

Conservative Party (United Kingdom) Conservatism and Christian democracy 1869–1940 ○ Natural causes

The appeasement architect whose bid to avoid war helped open the way to it

Returning from Munich in 1938, he declared the agreement to mean “peace for our time.”

Neville Chamberlain was a British Conservative politician whose career combined domestic administrative reform with finance before he became prime minister. Seeking to avoid another European war and gain time for rearmament, he pursued appeasement, but the strategy failed to restrain Nazi Germany's expansion. His government's acceptance of the Munich settlement in 1938, and its limited response to Soviet proposals for collective security, formed part of the international conditions surrounding the 1939 crisis and the Nazi-Soviet Pact. After declaring war on Germany following the invasion of Poland, he resigned in 1940 amid criticism of the Norway campaign.

United Kingdom state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1897–1977 ○ Natural causes

A British diplomat of war and decolonisation

At the 1945 San Francisco Conference, the foreign ministers of the four sponsoring Allied powers took turns chairing the plenary sessions, with Eden among them.

Anthony Eden was a British Conservative statesman whose First World War service reinforced his commitment to the League of Nations and collective security. He served three times as foreign secretary amid the rise of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and during the Second World War acted as Winston Churchill’s principal diplomatic lieutenant in negotiations with the Soviet Union and the other Allies over the postwar order. Representing Britain at Yalta and at the 1945 San Francisco Conference, he helped shape the emerging international institutions, yet as prime minister he pursued the Suez invasion, exposing both the limits of British imperial power and Britain’s dependence on the United States.

United Kingdom state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1917–2001 ○ Natural causes

A Greece expert at the boundary of resistance and empire

After the 1942 Gorgopotamos operation, he stayed in Greece rather than evacuating, building the mission that linked the resistance to Cairo.

Christopher Montague Woodhouse was a British army officer, SOE and MI6 operative, and historian of Greek politics. In occupied Greece he helped establish and later led the British Military Mission, maintaining contact with ELAS and EDES while linking the resistance to Allied strategy. His work also reveals the tension between military cooperation with a broad resistance and Britain's effort to restore the monarchy and preserve its influence after liberation. He later served as an MP and wrote extensively on modern Greece.