- 1st Baron Irwin (1925-1934), 3rd Viscount Halifax (1934-1944), and 1st Earl of Halifax (1944-1959)
- Viceroy of India (1926-1931), as Lord Irwin
- Served as Great Britain's War Secretary (1935) and Foreign Secretary (1938-1940), and was long a major opponent of British involvement in WWII, firmly supporting Neville Chamberlain.
- Served in the House of Commons (1910-?) and in the British cabinet from 1922-1925; later the Conservative leader in the House of Lords (1935)
- British Ambassador to the United States (1941-1946), and British delegate to the San Francisco conference establishing the United Nations.
- The fourth son of the 2nd Viscount Halifax (his older brothers died before he was 9), he was born with an atrophied left arm that had no hand.
- During the War Cabinet Crisis of 25-28 May 1940 Halifax suggested asking the still-neutral Benito Mussolini to broker a negotiated end to the war.
- Halifax favored approaching Italy to see if acceptable terms were on offer, as it would give a chance to extract the BEF from France and in his view better terms might be obtained with France still in the war than after her defeat. Churchill - who appears to been deluding himself about the likelihood of France fighting on and about the imminence of US entry - in drumming up the support of the Labour ministers, asserted that peace would mean "surrender" and handing over the Royal Navy, a view which has passed so deep into popular mythology that most historians just skate quickly over the matter as it is almost impossible to have a rational discussion about it. It is simply impossible to say what armistice terms might have been on offer.
- Despite his later association with "appeasement", Halifax actually pressed the UK government to offer a pact to Poland early in 1939 in order to deter a German invasion (although in the event both Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in September).
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