| Honorific-Prefix: | The Right Honourable | ||||||||
| The Lord Beaverbrook | |||||||||
| Birth Date: | 29 December 1951 | ||||||||
| Education: | Charterhouse School Pembroke College, Cambridge Royal College of Defence Studies | ||||||||
| Occupation: | Politician | ||||||||
| Children: | 4 | ||||||||
| Parents: | Sir Max Aitken, 2nd Baronet Violet de Trafford | ||||||||
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Maxwell William Humphrey Aitken, 3rd Baron Beaverbrook (born 29 December 1951) is a British peer and politician.
Maxwell Aitken is the grandson of The 1st Baron Beaverbrook and the only son of Sir Max Aitken, by his third marriage to Violet de Trafford. He was educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Cambridge, and the Royal College of Defence Studies.[1]
Aitken married Susan Angela More O'Ferrall, a member of an aristocratic Irish family and granddaughter of Sir Henry Mather-Jackson, 6th Baronet, on 19 July 1974. They have four children:
Lord Beaverbrook was a Lord in Waiting (1986–1988) and the Treasurer of the Conservative Party and the European Democrat Union (1990–1992).
In 2004, Lord Beaverbrook was appointed Honorary Air Commodore of No. 4626 Squadron in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force (RAuxAF). In 2009 he was promoted to be Honorary Inspector General, RAuxAF, in the rank of air vice-marshal.[2] In May 2016 he was appointed to the new post of Commandant General RAuxAF, with attendance at the Air Force Board. He retired in July 2019.
He is Chairman of the Beaverbrook Foundation and has been a trustee since 1974. In 2003 The Beaverbrook Foundation claimed that 133 valuable paintings in the Beaverbrook Art Gallery given to the gallery by the first Lord Beaverbrook were not donated, but were instead on long-term loan from the Beaverbrook Foundation. The paintings were estimated to be worth approximately C$100 million. On 26 March 2007, the arbiter in the case, retired Supreme Court Justice Peter Cory, ruled that 85 paintings donated to the gallery before opening in the 1950s belong to the gallery, but that 48 paintings transferred after the opening belong to the Beaverbrook Foundation.[3] The arbitration ruling was appealed and a settlement was reached in 2010. Another case between the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation, chaired by Lord Beaverbrook's son, Max, and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery has also been settled.
He was a director of the British Racing Drivers Club from 2006 to 2008, and elected again from September 2015. He is currently a Vice President of the British Powerboat Racing Club.[4] He won the European GT Championship in 1998 with Porsche, and competed in the FIA World GT Championship in 1999, and in the American Le Mans series in 2000. He won the Harmsworth Trophy (offshore powerboating) in 2004.
He was a member of the Council of the Homeopathic Trust 1987–1992; and remains a Vice President of Ambition UK, and is a Patron of London's Air Ambulance.