Sir Howard Kingsley Wood (1881-1943) was elected to the London County Council in 1911, and later to the House of Commons as the MP for Woolwich West in 1918 (which he would represent for the rest of his life). After Stanley Baldwin’s victory in the 1924 election, Wood served as junior minister to Neville Chamberlain at the Ministry of Health, establishing a close personal and political alliance. His first cabinet post came in 1931, serving as Postmaster General, a role in which he transformed the British Post Office from a bureaucracy into a more commercial operation. As Secretary of State for Air in the months prior to the Second World War, he oversaw a huge increase in the production of warplanes to bring Britain up to parity with Germany. Later, when Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, Wood was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, adopting policies propounded by John Maynard Keynes, and changing the role of the Treasury from custodian of government income and expenditure into the steering force of the entire British economy.
The present address dates from an important period in Wood’s political life, being presented to him upon his departure as the prospective parliamentary candidate for East Finsbury (due to its merger with a neighbouring constituency), just one month before his successful election to parliament for Woolwich West, and a few months after his knighthood at the unusually early age of 36.
An attractive example of an illuminated address presented to a notable figure in British politics during the first half of the twentieth century.