‘Poor old Austen!’ Leo Amery wrote three days before Chamberlain's death. ‘He just missed greatness and the highest position, but his was a fine life of honourable public service. His real weakness was his over anxiety for good form which he was sometimes inclined to identity too much with loyalty’. In many respects Amery's brief epitaph is typical of so many assessments of this ostensibly so simple but supremely enigmatic figure. There could be no denying Austen Chamberlain's distinguished career. He sat in the House of Commons for an unbroken period of forty-five years. It was a career that truly represented a ‘link with time’. Among the many tributes after his death, Lloyd George had reminded the Commons that Joseph Chamberlain had been congratulated on his son's maiden speech by Gladstone, a leader who himself had been first elected in the year of the Great Reform Act and first served under Peel. As one MP recalled of the occasion, ‘The younger Members felt that they had been carried back through Lloyd George to Gladstone away to the battles of the Reform Bill and the administration of the Duke of Wellington’. Of his almost half a century in the Commons, Chamberlain spent over twenty-two years holding ministerial office. In 1895, at the age of only 32, he became Civil Lord to the Admiralty. Thirty-six years later in his last ministerial position he returned to his ‘first love’ as First Lord in the same department. In the interim, he held all the great offices of State except that of Prime Minister and Home Secretary. Rising from Postmaster-General, he served twice as Chancellor of the Exchequer and once as Foreign Secretary. He was also a member of Lloyd George's War Cabinet and held the India Office. Even at the age of 72 many still saw him as the obvious candidate for the Foreign Office after Hoare's forced resignation in December 1935. By any standard, this was a remarkable ministerial and parliamentary career.

Like most Conservatives, by the spring of 1915 Chamberlain was gravely concerned by the Asquith government's conduct of the war. He was also convinced that the situation demanded a radical response. During the May 1915 crisis he played a significant role both in stiffening Law's resolve to join a coalition and in converting those like Carson and Cecil who doubted the wisdom of such a course: a position he defended with the argument that ‘the responsibility of refusing is even greater than that of accepting, and in fact we have no choice’. In the ministerial reshuffle which followed, he lobbied strenuously on behalf of Milner and was prepared to ‘make any personal sacrifice … to secure his inclusion’. Characteristically, however, Chamberlain took no part in the manoeuvring for office personally and declared himself content to ‘go anywhere where I can be useful’. In the event, Milner was excluded and Chamberlain received the India Office. Even with the benefit of a close relationship with the experienced Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, the burdens of this new department soon proved formidable. Chamberlain had no knowledge of India and its problems beyond his brief chairmanship of a Commission on Indian Finance two years before. Moreover, by 1915 India was deeply involved in the Imperial war effort and Chamberlain inherited a campaign in Mesopotamia with the realization that formal constitutional control from London would inevitably be much diluted during wartime. In his first letter to the Viceroy he had thus urged ‘a rigorous concentration of effort on the essential points of the struggle’ because there was ‘always a danger that the General on the spot will see his own needs and opportunities so strongly that they will not take their proper place in the perspective of the whole scheme of the war’. Unfortunately this proved to be an all too prescient apprehension.

If Chamberlain's decision to resign in 1917 was a quixotic gesture of ‘slightly misdirected principle’, it was also wholly consistent with his past conduct and character. As a result, he was undoubtedly gratified by the warm response generated by his instinctive sense of public rectitude when resignation appeared the only honourable course to adopt. Although soon lamenting the loss of ‘inside information’ he also derived initial solace from the prospect of a much needed rest and a real holiday. After two years in office, the strains were clearly beginning to tell upon him. In this respect at least, resignation can rightly be seen as ‘a blessing in disguise’. His withdrawal to recuperate was further assisted by his firm conviction that recently resigned ministers should ‘take themselves off for a time’ or risk becoming either an encumbrance to their successors or a focus for parliamentary intrigue and discontent. The decision was made still easier by the constant air raids on London at this time. In the autumn of 1917, therefore, Chamberlain decided to move the family from Rowfant – Godfrey Locker-Lampson's Elizabethan home near Crawley — first to Barton St. Mary, and then on to Thornhill House near East Grinstead where, for the next three y ears, he indulged his passion for gardening to the full.

By the early spring of 1918 Chamberlain's return to the government represented an increasingly attractive proposition for the Prime Minister. Chamberlain's stock had certainly risen substantially since his attacks upon the influence of the press lords in February and March. In some quarters he was already perceived ta be ‘the alternative Prime Minister, if by some mischance Lloyd George were to be killed by a golf-ball’. As the Irish problem forced itself back to the top of the political agenda there were also obvious dangers in leaving him on the backbenches as a focus for Unionist discontent – particularly as he was known to hold strong views on the need to extend conscription to Ireland. Thus, when the crisis over the proposal to link Home Rule and conscription broke in early April, Lloyd George finally resolved that he should be offered office. To this end, on 9 April Law was despatched to invite Chamberlain to join the War Cabinet. Despite his own ambivalence towards Lloyd George's character and a continued concern about the influence of the press lords, Chamberlain was also predisposed to return to office: a position reinforced by the military crisis created by Ludendorff's massive offensive on 21 March.

Chamberlain emerged from the government reshuffle which followed the ‘Coupon’ election as Chancellor of the Exchequer. In many respects the appointment appears unremarkable given his past experience and reputation. His first tenure of the office had been in October 1903 in the immediate aftermath of his father's departure from the Balfour Cabinet. Although only a few days from his fortieth birthday and widely regarded as a ‘hostage for Joe’, he soon proved himself to be a capable minister. During this period a future Permanent Secretary at the department ‘thought highly’ of him as a ‘hard worker and good official’. Walter Long went even further in contending that he was ‘without exception the best Chancellor of the Exchequer he ha[d] ever worked with’ After leading the opposition to Lloyd George's 1909 budget, even former detractors were obliged to concede that Chamberlain was ‘in the first rank as a debater and as a leader’ It was a measure of this stature that at the outbreak of war in 1914 Lloyd George had invited him to attend the Financial Conference assembled to tackle the initial emergency. On one occasion the Chancellor had even asked Chamberlain to preside while he attended a Cabinet meeting. Although Lloyd George later presented this unique occurrence as ‘a foretaste of the Coalition’, others rejoiced that Chamberlain was ‘practically acting as chancellor of the exchequer’ because Lloyd George, ‘who knows very little of finance, has completely lost his head’: a preference initially echoed within the Treasury itself.

On 17 March 1921 Bonar Law unexpectedly announced his resignation on grounds of ill-health. Having abandoned all expectation of obtaining the leadership for himself a decade earlier, Chamberlain now found the prize equally suddenly and unexpectedly within his grasp. His conduct during this period illustrates much about Chamberlain's character. In particular, it revealed again that lack of steely ambition and ‘pushfulness’ so evident in his father: a weakness he cloaked beneath an acute sensitivity to the outward appearance of political propriety and personal delicacy. As he wrote to J. C. C. Davidson after his succession, with regard to such matters he had ‘a great honor of anything that savours of intrigue or pushfulness on the part of a possible candidate, and felt then as I felt ten years ago … that the only right thing to do was to keep quiet and have members to make up their own minds without either courting their favour or shunning responsibility if their choice fell upon me’. Having thus ‘emerged’ by acclamation as undisputed leader, another feature of Chamberlain's character swiftly manifested itself in his initial sense of weary trepidation at entering upon an apparently unpalatable task with grave reluctance. Like every other office, therefore, he confessed to his family that he accepted the leadership as ‘an obvious duty but without pleasure or any great expectation except of trouble and hard labour’.

In the aftermath of the 1918 election Law believed ‘Lloyd George can be Prime Minister for life if he wants’. In the event, the government survived only four turbulent years. Although 1922 was to be a critical year for the Coalition, the year began auspiciously. For all the problems during 1921, by December the fortunes and confidence of the coalition leadership were greater than for some time. A week after signing the Irish Treaty, the government claimed something of a diplomatic triumph with the four-power treaty in Washington covering Pacific and Far Eastern questions. Thereafter progress was also swiftly made with regard to naval disarmament (finally signed on 6 February 1922). Two days after the Pacific agreement, the Commons debate on the Irish Treaty provided the government with its first notable parliamentary success for some months. For the moment even Law broke the ominous silence he had maintained throughout the negotiations to declare his approval. While in the longer term the Irish Treaty was to prove both ‘Lloyd George's greatest achievement, but … also the greatest single cause of his overthrow’, in December 1921 it had undoubtedly restored the government's fortunes and renewed its sense of policy direction. Moreover, although relations with France had been gravely aggravated by the unilateral Angora agreement with the Turks in November 1921 and even more by French obstructionism at Washington, even Anglo-French relations provided some substance for hope. The ‘conversations’ with Briand in London from 18–22 December thus set in motion a process which led, via Cannes and Genoa, to an attempt to resolve Anglo-French differences over German reparations. With Ireland settled, Washington still hailed a triumph and plans already in progress for a conference offering the prospect of European peace and the restoration of prosperity, the scene was set for an attempt to engineer indirectly that which could not be achieved by direct calls for ‘fusion’. Encouraged by McCurdy's grossly over-optimistic assessments of the prospects, some time before Christmas Lloyd George decided that circumstances were propitious for another coalition election. At a dinner held by Birkenhead after the Irish Treaty debate, the subject was discussed for the first time by the Coalition leaders.

The significance of the Carlton Club revolt was that it formally destroyed the Coalition without exorcising the menacing spectre of coalitionism. When Lloyd George resigned on the afternoon of 19 October 1922 he was followed into the wilderness by some of the most experienced and talented Conservative politicians of the age. This group subsequently established their collective position in the form of a manifesto to the press reaffirming their loyalty to Lloyd George, with whom ‘there had been no difference be it … on matters of principle or policy’, and portentously warning that ‘other men who had given other counsels must inherit our burden and discharge its consequent responsibilities’. Thereafter, when initial hopes that Law would not obtain an absolutely majority were extinguished, the Chamberlainites took refuge in pique that appeared almost inexhaustible. Under Birkenhead's effective strategic direction, the objective was to present the Chamberlainites as a coherent alternative leadership for the Conservative Party: a strategy founded upon the firm and constant conviction that incompetents and ‘second class brains’ could not rule empires. Given time, Birkenhead believed, the Law government would engineer its own humiliation and downfall. Abstinence from office in the short-term was thus merely a prelude to permanent anti-socialist coalition. In the interim they considered it sufficient to stand aloof to avoid being tainted with the opprobrium of their successors and to pour derision upon the ‘second class brains’ who had succeeded them.

At the Carlton Club meeting in October 1922 Balfour had reflected caustically that while ‘it has never been a Conservative principle to abandon a Leader … I concede it has sometimes been a Conservative practice’. At this meeting, the Conservative Party had abandoned Austen Chamberlain. A little over a year later it appeared as if a similar fate would befall his principal successor. Amid the ruins of Law's victory for ‘Tranquillity’ many observers subscribed to Hanky's view that ‘Baldwin, though a nice fellow is not the stuff of which British Prime Ministers are made’. In the immediate aftermath of this disaster, most also assumed he would be compelled to pay the ultimate price for this inadequacy. Certainly Birhenhead was one of them. Electoral defeat was a vindication of all that he had predicted since the fall of the Coalition. Rejoicing that it had finally ‘put an end to the idea that fifth rate intelligence could govern the Empire’, Birkenhead set in motion the final act in a strategy to which he had committed the Chamberlainites in November 1922. Between 6 and 10 December rumours abounded that the former Conservative Coalitionists were about to displace Baldwin, replace him variously with Balfour, Derby or Chamberlain and then form some sort of Liberal-Conservative combination to exclude Labour from office. In the event, the plan miscarried. The apparent recrudescence of the ‘old intrigue’ rallied the victors of the Carlton Club to defend the Party, their brand of Conservatism and, by necessity, its leader from coalitionist conspiracy. Virtually overnight, Baldwin was transformed from the wanton destroyer of Law's majority into the guarantor of Conservative principle. As Amery told Baldwin, ‘you embody and personify the decision of the Party to live its own life and have its own constructive policy’. Ultimately, therefore, despite much Conservative anger, frustration and despair at Baldwin's perceived folly, the impulse which brought about the coalescence of figures as diverse as the Cecils, Younger, Strachey, Gretton and the ministerial beneficiaries of the Carlton Club was the consensus that they were ‘not prepared to cut off Baldwin's head and make Austen Chamberlain King’. They were even less inclined to install Birkenhead as Regent.

Since his early student travels to France and Germany Chamberlain believed that he had been in training for the Foreign Office. Although he had accepted the shadow portfolio for foreign affairs on his return to the Conservative front bench in February, however, he did not consider the Foreign Office as a possibility until Baldwin first raised the question in October 1924. At this juncture, daunted by the expense, the exacting burden of work with which he was unfamiliar and the attendant political risks, Chamberlain had been inclined to prefer a return to the India Office. In the event, his wife recommended the Foreign Office and, rather uncharacteristically, he was soon confiding to his sisters that he had ‘rapidly found [his] feet’. Within a year he was rejoicing in afar greater sense of fulfilment from the Foreign Office than he could ever have expected from being Prime Minister. To a considerable degree this satisfaction was derived from the very special nature of the position enjoyed by a British Foreign Secretary. As he noted when the offer was first made, the Foreign Office ‘is the highest office in the public estimation’: a status reflected in the special pomp and dignity which surrounded its holder. As Eden later recalled, the Foreign Secretary's journey to Geneva was ‘something of an event and took place at a measured pace. The top-hatted stationmaster and the Foreign Office representatives at Victoria, the harbourmaster at Dover bowing us on to the ship, the préfect and the mayor of Calais, then the drive across Paris and dinner at the Embassy, the night train at the Gare de Lyon, where M. Briand and some other of Sir Austen's colleagues were also embarking for Geneva. Finally, the arrival at Geneva, about 7.30 in the morning, when the whole staff was paraded to meet their chief at the station’. In many respects, Chamberlain was ideally suited by character and temperament to fulfil such a role as a model British Foreign Secretary.

Success at Locarno massively enhanced Chamberlain's authority in the management of foreign affairs to the extent that it appeared he would remain unshakeably in control for the duration of Baldwin's second administration. Yet perhaps the greatest tragedy of this period in Chamberlain's career was that his most glorious triumph should have come near the beginning of his term in office rather than as a natural culmination and fitting climax at its end. Although Chamberlain had always acknowledged that Locarno was but a beginning and ‘there are still difficulties to be faced and still a long road to travel’. critics have argued that after the plaudits and glories of Locarno Chamberlain demonstrated too little appetite for the wider issues of collective security and arms limitation. Under the spell of his personal triumph perhaps he too easily allowed a note of complacency to creep into the conduct of foreign affairs. Apparently not sure what to do next, he is thus often depicted as ‘a spent force after his efforts at Locarno … satisfied with his semi-detached relationship with Europe, qualified only by a tendency to lean towards France and to grumble over German ingratitude and demands for further revision of the Versailles treaty’. Yet, while some of this criticism may be valid, it also needs to be seen in its proper context. Certainly, as Chamberlain later described it himself, Britain came to occupy a ‘semi-detached position’ in relation to Europe after Locarno. Yet even before it, he had always contended that the security of the eastern European states was not only a problem for the future, but also one that it was not for Britain to solve. While his apparent indifference to events east of the Rhine may have been demoralising in central Europe, therefore, British reluctance to take a lead in extending the Locarno system outside the sphere of vital national interest was the almost inevitable corollary of Chamberlain's policy motivation for pursuing a Rhineland Pact in the first place. The ‘spirit of Locarno’ was not to be a model for future British action but rather a beacon to guide others in assuming the initiative elsewhere.

Although electoral defeat and loss of office can never be a welcome experience, in June 1929 the pain of Ansten Chamberlain's transition to the Opposition benches was temporarily alleviated by a sense of personal relief at his continued presence in the House of Commons at all. After the 1924 election he had confessed that the position in his West Birmingham constituency made him ‘very anxious’. Predicting that ‘it will be a suffer fight next time’ he had thus resolved to ‘try somehow to see more of them’. Four and a half years at the Foreign Office did nothing to help him redeem that pledge. By 1929 Chamberlain confronted not only an increasingly difficult situation in West Birmingham where the slums and poverty had given him cause to wonder at a Conservative victory in the past, but also the general electoral disillusion with the Baldwin's government's promise of ‘Safety First’ and their failure to revive the economy. Although never an active or particularly diligent constituency MP, in 1929 Chamberlain almost fell victim to a more general decline in Conservative support within the West Midlands. Since 1886 the Conservatives had never lost more than one Birmingham seat. In 1929 Labour were in confident mood and took no less than six of the twelve seats. After the canvass returns, Chamberlain had warned his family to expect defeat and during the two counts he confessed himself to be ‘in a very philosophic mood’. In the event, he scraped in by just 43 votes in a seat held continuously by a Chamberlain for almost half a century.

Austen Chamberlain did not play a significant role in the events leading up to the political crisis or the decision to form a National Government on 24 August 1931. The eventual outcome of those developments, however, delivered a bitter blow to his self-esteem and marked a major watershed in his career. Had the Conservatives won the 1929 election, Chamberlain believed Baldwin would have returned him to the Foreign Office as he had promised. He continued to nurture this expectation throughout the period in Opposition. Even after being struck forcibly by the ‘violent animus against the “Old Gang”’ and the very specific attacks upon his foreign policy in Egypt and China at the Caxton Hall meeting in October 1930, he still consoled himself with the thought that none of his colleagues were excluded from criticism; that the critics consisted mainly of reactionary, disreputable or disgruntled groups (often all three) without ‘many young men of a decent type’; and that such grousing was symptomatic of the frustration engendered by Baldwin's lack of leadership and a natural impatience for youth to have its chance. As a result, he remained content to believe that not only did he still have much to contribute in foreign affairs but that there was no one else with a comparable claim to the portfolio.

Participation in the first brief National Government had disabused Chamberlain of many of his fondest illusions. Before the crisis he believed he still had a uniquely valuable role to play in foreign affairs and that others recognised such a claim to the Foreign Office. He also believed his voice carried considerable weight in party councils. The crisis and its aftermath appeared to suggest that this was not so. Or at least, it showed him that Baldwin and MacDonald had other ideas. While not entirely the same thing, such a realisation hurt him more rather than less. By the time the initial crisis had passed, Chamberlain had come to recognise that his ministerial career was at an end. Secure in a seat he intended to hold for only one more Parliament, he felt he could now ‘sing [his] Nunc Dimittis politically’. Many felt that this spelt the end of Chamberlain's political influence as well as his ministerial career. Even before the 1929 election, critics like Amery had believed that his proper role was as ‘the obvious successor to Balfour as principal Elder Statesman in a non-administrative office’ Certainly Chamberlain gave every outward appearance of being more rooted firmly in the parliaments of the late nineteenth than in the twentieth century. In his dress, manner and parliamentary conduct he seemed to many observers to be a charming anachronism. Yet such appearances were deceptive. For the next eighteen months Chamberlain was plunged into the depths of depression as he sought to accommodate himself to these new circumstances and to find a new role for himself — or even to discover whether there still remained a useful role for him to fulfil.

During the spring of 1933 there was a sudden and dramatic improvement in Chamberlain's spirits as the clouds of gloom which had hung over him since having office began to disperse. At last, Garvin's efforts were beginning to bear fruit as the first two volumes of the long-awaited Life of Joseph Chamberlain appeared to a favourable reception from both the family and the general public. Chamberlain was also beginning to earn some money to at host alleviate his financial worries. The principal reason for this renaissance, however, was a growing confidence that his stock was rapidly rising both in the Commons and outside it. No longer physically and mentally exhausted by the constant demands of office, his speeches became the subject of ‘pleasant observations’ and genuine praise from lobby correspondents and fellow Members. Moreover, as new problems and threats emerged to confront the Empire, Chamberlain also became convinced that he still had a valuable contribution to make and a voice capable of carrying that message with authority. A significant barometer of this recovery in his morale is to be found in the greater length and detail of his diary Utters during this period.

Chamberlain had little to say about the Cabinet reshuffle in June 1935 ‘except to thank heaven that Simon has left the F.O.’ Although initially satisfied with the performance of Sam Hoare, Simon's successor, Chamberlain's mood throughout the summer of 1935 was one of gloom whenever he considered ‘what a mess the whole world is in’. He remained very depressed about tensions with the other two ‘Stresa front’ powers when Parliament was dissolved for the General Election on 25 October 1935. Although still opposed by his old Labour adversary who had haunted the doorsteps of West Birmingham so assiduously since 1929, from the outset Chamberlain was remarkably confident about the result; ‘my people don't seem afraid of him … B'ham trade is good and people look happier than they did a few years ago’. Moreover, during the campaign he was particularly heartened to find that the old Chamberlain spirit kindled by his father continued to be an active force in what was a ‘regular “slum” constituency’. In the event, his confidence was well founded. In West Birmingham he was returned with a majority of over 7,000, the Conservatives again took all twelve seats in the city and the National Government returned with a majority of 255 to exceed even Chamberlain's wildest expectations.