Harry Frederick Comfort Crookshank, 1st Viscount Crookshank, (27 May 1893 – 17 October 1961), was a British Conservative politician. He was Minister of Health between 1951 and 1952 and Leader of the House of Commons between 1951 and 1955. Background and education Crookshank was born in Cairo, Egypt, the son of Harry Maule Crookshank and Emma, daughter of Major Samuel Comfort, of New York City. On his father's side, he descended from Alexander Crookshank, of County Longford, Ireland, who represented Belfast in the Irish House of Commons and served as a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland. He was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford. In the First World War, he joined the Hampshire Regiment and served as a captain in the Grenadier Guards. On one occasion he was buried alive by an explosion for twenty minutes, and on another in 1916 he was castrated by shrapnel, requiring him to wear a surgical truss for the rest of his life. He was awarded by Serbia the Order of the White Eagle and Gold Medal for Valour. He joined the Diplomatic Service in 1919 and worked at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., until 1924. Political career Crookshank was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Gainsborough in 1924, a seat he held for the next 32 years. He entered the government as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department in 1934 under Ramsay MacDonald. When Stanley Baldwin became prime minister in 1935 Crookshank was appointed Secretary for Mines, a post he retained when Neville Chamberlain became prime minister in 1937 until February 1939. Crookshank called Chamberlain "crazed and hypnotised by a loony" to have accepted the Munich Agreement and sent a letter of resignation in protest, but was convinced to rescind it. In the latter year, he was sworn of the Privy Council and made Financial Secretary to the Treasury. He continued in this post also when Winston Churchill came to power in 1940, and was then Postmaster General under Churchill between 1943 and 1945. In 1942 he was offered the post of British Minister Resident in the Mediterranean at Algiers following the liberation of Algeria by Operation Torch but he declined, Harold Macmillan being appointed instead. When the Conservatives returned to office under Churchill in 1951, Crookshank was appointed Minister of Health and Leader of the House of Commons, with a seat in the cabinet. In