*** Welcome to piglix ***

A.V. Alexander

The Right Honourable
The Earl Alexander of Hillsborough
KG CH PC
INF3-62 A V Alexander Artist's signature E A B.jpg
Sketch of Alexander commissioned by the Ministry of Information in the World War II period possibly based on a photograph by Yousuf Karsh ("Karsh of Ottawa")
First Lord of the Admiralty
In office
7 June 1929 – 24 August 1931
Monarch George V
Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by William Bridgeman
Succeeded by Sir Austen Chamberlain
In office
11 May 1940 – 25 May 1945
Monarch George VI
Prime Minister Winston Churchill
Preceded by Winston Churchill
Succeeded by Brendan Bracken
In office
3 August 1945 – 4 October 1946
Monarch George VI
Prime Minister Clement Attlee
Preceded by Brendan Bracken
Succeeded by George Hall
Minister of Defence
In office
20 December 1946 – 28 February 1950
Monarch George VI
Prime Minister Clement Attlee
Preceded by Clement Attlee
Succeeded by Manny Shinwell
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
In office
28 February 1950 – 26 October 1951
Monarch George VI
Prime Minister Clement Attlee
Preceded by Hugh Dalton
Succeeded by The Viscount Swinton
Leader of the Labour Party in the House of Lords
In office
December 1955 – October 1964
Preceded by The Earl Jowitt
Succeeded by The Earl of Longford
Personal details
Born (1885-05-01)1 May 1885
Weston-super-Mare, Somerset
Died 11 January 1965(1965-01-11) (aged 79)
London, England
Nationality British
Political party Labour Co-operative
Spouse(s) Esther Chapple (m. 1908; his death 1965)
Alma mater None

Albert Victor Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Hillsborough, KG, CH, PC (1 May 1885 – 11 January 1965) was a British Labour Co-operative politician. He was three times First Lord of the Admiralty, including during the Second World War, and then Minister of Defence under Clement Attlee.

Born in Weston-super-Mare and one of four children, A. V. Alexander was the son of Albert Alexander, a blacksmith and later engineer who had moved from his native Wiltshire to Bristol during the agricultural depression of the 1860s and 1870s, and Eliza Jane Thatcher, daughter of a policeman. He was named after both his father and Prince Albert Victor, Queen Victoria's eldest grandson, but he was known as "A. V." from a young age. His parents had settled in Weston when they married, but the family moved to Bristol after Albert Alexander's death in August 1886. Alexander's mother worked as a corset-maker to provide for her children.

Alexander attended Barton Hill School from the age of three, at a cost of two pence per week. Against his mother's wishes, he chose not to continue to St. George's Higher Grade School in 1898, feeling the increased weekly charge of six pence was too expensive and that he would get nothing more from school. He began work aged thirteen, first for a leather merchant, and five months later as a junior clerk with the Bristol School Board. In 1903 he transferred to Somerset County Council's newly formed local education authority, where he worked in the School Management Department as a committee clerk. He was by this time a keen chorister and footballer, and a self-taught pianist. In later years, and until his death, Alexander was a vice-president of Chelsea F.C. – his role at the club was taken on by Richard Attenborough.


...
Wikipedia

...