MY DAZZLING, MISCHIEVOUS GREAT UNCLE WOULD HAVE APPLAUDED BREXIT

As the Daily Express marks its 125th anniversary today, former cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken fondly recalls the paper's mercurial ex-proprietor Lord Beaverbrook, who turned it into the world's most famous publication

- Giles Sheldrick

IF THERE is one word that perfectly encapsulates Lord Beaverbrook, it is mischief. The Canadian-British newspaper magnate and wartime minister built the Daily Express into the most successful mass-circulation newspaper in the world, with multi-million copies sold every day. He used it to pursue personal campaigns, most notably tariff reform and making the British Empire a free trade bloc.

So the history-defining Brexit vote is one William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, would have particularly relished. Not only because he loathed the idea of Britain joining the Common Market before we did in 1973 - but also because he simply loved stirring things up.

Born in Ontario, Lord Beaverbrook died in June 1964 at the age of 85.

But had he been alive 52 years later to witness the stunning referendum result on June 23, 2016, a full century after he took control of the Express, he would have wholeheartedly approved of the greatest newspaper campaign in history, shouting its success from the rafters. His great nephew, former Tory MP turned Church of England priest Jonathan Aitken, is the only relative able to remember meeting the "great man".

He was 19 when Lord Beaverbrook summoned him to Cherkley Court, his country pile in Surrey, where he lavishly entertained, and the meeting left an indelible mark.

Rev Aitken said: "The first question Uncle Max asked, cackling, was, 'Are you the sort of boy who likes to stir up mischief?

"I was a mischief-maker when I was your age. I still am!'

"Then he asked me, 'Are you for or against the Common Market?' I replied, 'I'm against it, sir.' He said: 'Good boy!"" It was at that initial meeting over Sunday lunch in 1962, a belated invitation because of a long-running family feud, that sparked a lifelong fascination with a man who became a millionaire by the age of 30, but left nothing in his will to his young relative.