Lord Home, better known as Alec Douglas-Home, was one of the most important Conservative statesman of the last century, whose long political career spanned over fifty years. He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Neville Chamberlain, whom he accompanied to Germany in 1938 on the government's abortive attempt to appease Hitler and Mussolini. In 1963, after Harold Macmillan's resignation, Lord Home briefly became Prime Minister. The Conservatives lost the election the following year but in 1970 Home returned to the post of Foreign Secretary, which he held until 1974. With its elongated figure slipping to the side of the canvas, this image suggests the character of a man described as the "quiet aristocrat of British politics".