Duff Cooper Alfred Duff Cooper , 1st Viscount Norwich GCMG , DSO , PC ( 22 February 18901 January 1954 ) , known as Duff Cooper , was a British Conservative Party politician , diplomat and author . He wrote six books , including an autobiography , " Old Men Forget " , and a biography of Talleyrand , the 18th and 19th century French diplomat . He wrote one novel , " Operation Heartbreak " ( 1950 ) , which has been republished by Persephone Books . Background and education . The only son of fashionable society doctor Sir Alfred Cooper and Lady Agnes Duff , daughter of James Duff , 5th Earl Fife , Duff Cooper was the youngest of their four children . He had royal connections : his maternal uncle , the first Duke of Fife , was married to Louise , Princess Royal , the daughter of King Edward VII , while his mother ' s maternal grandmother was Elizabeth Hay , Countess of Erroll , an illegitimate daughter of King William IV and his mistress Dorothy Jordan . Cooper enjoyed a typical gentleman ' s upbringing of country estates , London society , Wixenford School Eton College and New College , Oxford . Early life and marriage . At Oxford , his Eton friendship with The Honourable John Nevile Manners , won him entry into a famous circle of young aristocrats and intellectuals known as the Coterie , including Patrick Shaw - Stewart , Raymond Asquith ( son of the Prime Minister ) , Sir Denis Anson , Edward Horner and the celebrated Lady Diana Manners . He cultivated a reputation for eloquence and fast living and although he had established a reputation as a poet , he earned an even stronger reputation for gambling , womanizing , and drinking in his studied emulation of the life of the 18th and 19th Whig statesman Charles James Fox . Following Oxford , he entered the Foreign Service and , owing to the national importance of his work at the cipher desk , he was excluded from military service until 1917 , when he joined the Grenadier Guards . He served with distinction as a lieutenant in the campaigns of 1918 , winning a Distinguished Service Order ( DSO ) for conspicuous gallantry . Almost all of his closest friends , including Shaw - Stewart , Horner , Asquith and John Manners were killed in the war , drawing him closer to Lady Diana Manners , whom he married in 1919 . An extremely popular social figure hailed for her beauty and eccentricities , she was one of several daughters born to the Duke and Duchess of Rutland ; her biological father , however , was believed to be the English politician Harry Cust , known as one of the most handsome men of his day . The Coopers ' marriage was fraught with infidelities , notably Duff ' s affairs with the Franco - American Singer sewing - machine heiress Daisy Fellowes , the socialite Gloria Guinness , the French novelist Louise Leveque de Vilmorin and the writer Susan Mary Alsop ( then an American diplomat ' s wife , by whom he had an illegitimate son , William Patten Jr . ) , The polo player ' Boy ' Capel ' s wife Diana , and the Anglo - Irish socialite and fashion model Maxime de La Falaise were two more , although Lady Diana reportedly did not mind , explaining to their son that " They were the flowers , but I was the tree . " Political career . Returning to the Foreign Service , he became principal private secretary to two ministers and played a significant role in the Egypt ian and Turkish crises in the early 1920s , before winning a seat in Parliament as a Conservative for UK Parliament constituency in 1924 . He gave one of the most acclaimed maiden speech es of the century and became known as a stalwart supporter of Stanley Baldwin , the Prime Minister , and a friend of Chancellor of the Exchequer , Winston Churchill . Cooper became Financial Secretary to the War Office in January , 1928 , before losing his seat in the 1929 election when the Conservative Party lost power . Turning to literature , he produced " Talleyrand " ( 1932 ) , a short biography that was published by his nephew Rupert Hart - Davis to critical praise and lasting success . The 1931 by - election for the constituency of UK Parliament constituency saw the Empire Free Trade Crusade party threatening the Conservative position at a time when satisfaction with Baldwin ' s leadership was at a low . When the original Conservative candidate stepped down , Duff Cooper agreed to contest the election in what was regarded as a referendum on Baldwin ' s leadership . He won the seat with a majority of 5 , 710 , thus returning to Parliament and serving until 1945 . Cooper returned to ministerial office as Financial Secretary to the War Office in 1931 , then as Financial Secretary to the Treasury in 1934 , he was elevated to the Cabinet as War Secretary in 1935 , and promoted to First Lord of the Admiralty in 1937 . He completed a biography of the British military commander Douglas Haig during this period . The most public critic of the Prime Minister of the day Neville Chamberlain ' s appeasement policy inside the Cabinet , he famously resigned the day after the 1938 Munich Agreement made with Adolf Hitler . On doing so he said , " War with honour or peace with dishonour , " he might have been persuaded to accept , " but war with dishonour - - that was too much . " Fellow appeasement critic and Conservative Party MP Vyvyan Adams described Cooper ' s actions as " the first step in the road back to national sanity . " Cooper later took a prominent role in the famous Norway Debate of 1940 , which led to Chamberlain ' s downfall . By now Cooper appeared in German propaganda as one of Britain ' s three most dangerous Conservative warmongers . He entered the Cabinet as Minister of Information under Winston Churchill , but after a controversial appointment as Resident Cabinet Minister in Singapore in 1941 , he did not play a major role in the direction of the war until appointed the British Government ' s liaison to the Free French in 1943 . He subsequently became the British ambassador to France in 1944 , and was a great success in Paris . He left office in 1947 , was knighted , and devoted himself primarily to literature until his death in 1954 , at the age of 63 . He produced during this period the classic autobiography " Old Men Forget " and was eventually created Viscount Norwich , of Aldwick in the County of Sussex , in 1952 , in recognition of his political and literary career . His wife refused to be called Lady Norwich , claiming that it sounded too much like " porridge " and promptly took out a newspaper advertisement declaring that she would retain her previous style of Lady Diana Cooper . Family . Duff Cooper ' s only legitimate child , John Julius Norwich ( born 1929 ) , became well known as a writer and television host and has published a collection of his father ' s diaries " The Duff Cooper Diaries : 1915 – 1951 " . His granddaughter Artemis Cooper has published several books , including " A Durable Fire : The Letters of Duff and Diana Cooper , 1913 – 50 " . Another granddaughter is screenwriter Allegra Huston , the only child of Norwich and Enrica Soma Huston , estranged wife of the American film director John Huston . Duff Cooper ' s niece Enid Levita ( daughter of his sister Stephanie ) , is the paternal grandmother of the Conservative Party leader David Cameron , who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 2010 . Duff Cooper was the subject of a biography by John Charmley and a British literary award , the Duff Cooper Prize , was established in his name . Fictional role . H . G . Wells in " The Shape of Things to Come " , published in 1934 , predicted a Second World War in which Britain would not participate but would vainly try to effect a peaceful compromise . In this vision , Duff Cooper was mentioned as one of several prominent Britons delivering " brilliant pacific speeches " which " echo throughout Europe " but fail to end the war ( the other would - be peacemakers , in Wells ' vision , included Leslie Hore Belisha , Ellen Wilkinson and Randolph Churchill ) .