Edward Wood, 3rd Viscount Halifax, was a church-going, fox-hunting aristocrat, but it was his political guile that earned him Churchill's nickname 'The Holy Fox'.

As Viceroy of India, his deal with Gandhi ended the Civil Disobedience campaign before it could force the British to quit. His meeting with Hitler in 1937 was a milestone in appeasement, yet just days before Munich, Halifax repudiated the policy and demanded 'the destruction of Nazism'. By May 1940, it was he, not Winston Churchill, who was the choice for Britain's war leader. Andrew Roberts has drawn on remarkable private documents to present Lord Halifax as an enigmatic, influential and much-maligned politician.