(ii) How have biographers regarded the post-1940 career of a leading British politician? Sir Stafford Cripps (1889-1952) Cripps did offer his services as Ambassador to Russia but was given the job as special envoy. Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax belligerent to Cripps’s globetrotting was now expressing doubts about the appeasement policy, Churchill thought it best if ‘left spoke to left’. Cripps main interest like his father’s Lord Parmoor was international relations, he had been writing pieces for some time about the importance of allying with Russia in the socialist newspaper he sponsored, _The Tribune. He received Ambassador status after he arrived in Moscow and served between June 1940 to January 1942 or between the Dunkirk retreat and the attack on Pearl Harbour. Churchill later when Conservative Leader of the Opposition plays down Cripps’s part in Moscow in his publications The Second World War and The Grand Alliance [7]. _Of course the Russians were suspicious after being threatened with war by Britain over Finland and they announced that they would not converse with anyone except an Ambassador. The Russians were convinced the vacillating by France and Britain was just biding time for their real policy of making a pact with Hitler. As A. J. P. Taylor summed up Britain’s policy at the time ‘no alliance has been pursued less enthusiastically’ [8]. On his arrival to Moscow Cripps did have a meeting with Premier Molotov where he made it plain that Britain would fight and not capitulate to Germany. After this meeting Cripps became restless and disillusioned with the slow pace of diplomacy and the workings of the Kremlin. Stalin did meet Cripps on July 1st1940 for trade talks, Cripps thought the meeting went well; his Embassy staff were less enthusiastic and knew that Russia did not want to antagonise Germany by having close contacts with Britain [9]. Eric Estorick in Stafford Cripps, points to Cripps’s failure to fully comprehend what Bolshevism and the...