Word: birkenhead
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...every Briton knows that Lord Birkenhead's grandfather was first a miner, next a fisticuffer who fought his way to the heavyweight championship of Yorkshire, finally a zealous house agent in grimy Birkenhead?just across the River Mersey from bustling Liverpool...
This fisticuffer's son went soldiering when a sprig of 17, wangled his way up in the hard-boiled Indian Service of Empress Victoria from Private to Sergeant Major, returned to help his father with house agenting, but drifted into Law. Thus when Frederick Edwin Smith was born at Birkenhead, on July 12, 1872, he inherited by right a wildcat's pugnacity and brawn, an old campaigner's slyness, a lawyer's bent...
...from politics, burning his ambition to become Prime Minister. The Galloper took the woolsack (a large red cloth cushion stuffed with wool), sat on it as a Lord Chancellor must, rested his foot on it now and then as a Lord Chancellor must not. In 1919 he became Baron Birkenhead, in 1921 accepted a Viscountcy commemorating his wife's maiden name (Furneaux), and in 1922 was created Earl of Birkenhead with an arrogant-humorous armorial motto of his own devising Faber Meae Fortunae: "[I'm] the Smith of my own Fortune...
Arbiter & Wit. At about this time Lord Birkenhead delivered his memorable knife thrust at the late Viscount Younger of Leckie (then Sir George Younger) who fancied himself for the Prime Ministry. "Since the day when the proverbial frog swelled itself up in rivalry with the bull until it burst," he said in part, "no frog ever has been in such grave physical danger as Sir George Younger." Of the Bonar Law Cabinet in 1923 Lord Birkenhead said: "They remind me of the Duke of Wellington's observation upon his generals: 'I don't know whether they will frighten the enemy...
Master of India & Tycoon. To the great grief of political rivals, who had thought Lord Birkenhead would quietly retire like most Lord Chancellors when his term expired, he rushed back to stumping for the Conservative Party. Grateful for such dynamic aid, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, lazy, muddling, made him Secretary of State for India in the last Conservative Cabinet (TIME...