Chamberlain's maiden speech in Parliament was in 1893, when Gladstone was still Prime Minister More than 40 years later, in one of his last speeches in the Commons, he warned against concessions to Hitler As Foreign Secretary in the 1920s, he was praised for his part in the signing of the Treaties of Locarno in 1925, but did not have the temperament for the higher office The author portrays the gardening, cycling, humorous, family man as the austere public figure