Philip Henry Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian, (18 April 1882 – 12 December 1940), known as Philip Kerr until 1930, was a British politician, diplomat and newspaper editor. He was private secretary to Prime Minister David Lloyd George between 1916 and 1921. After succeeding a cousin in the marquessate in 1930, he held minor office from 1931 to 1932 in the National Government, headed by Ramsay MacDonald. In the late 1930s, he was a leading advocate of appeasement of Germany, emphasizing the harshness of the Treaty of Versailles and the dangers of Stalin's communism. From 1939 until his death, he was Ambassador to the United States. He proved highly successful in winning America's support for the British war effort, especially the Lend-Lease Act, which passed Congress after his death. Background and education Kerr was born in London as the eldest son of Major-General Lord Ralph Kerr, who was the third son of John Kerr, 7th Marquess of Lothian. His mother was Lady Anne Fitzalan-Howard, the daughter of Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 14th Duke of Norfolk, by the Honourable Augusta Mary Minna Catherine Lyons, the daughter of Vice-Admiral Edmund Lyons, 1st Baron Lyons. Kerr was a nephew of Edmund FitzAlan-Howard, 1st Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent, and a great-nephew of Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons. Via his descent from the Lyons family, Kerr was a relative of Maine Swete Osmond Walrond (1870–1927), who was the Private Secretary to the Private Secretary to Lord Milner and a fellow member of Milner's Kindergarten. Kerr was educated at The Oratory School, Birmingham, Cardinal Newman's foundation, from 1892 to 1900, and at New College, Oxford, where he took a First in Modern History in 1904, subsequent to which, in 1904, he tried unsuccessfully for a Prize Fellowship of All Souls College, Oxford. As an undergraduate, Kerr was known for his "androgynous" good looks and for being extremely narcissistic, leading him to be given the nickname "Narcissus" at Oxford. At Oxford, Kerr acquired a life-long love of golf, and a reputation as a charming intellectual who knew how to make appealing arguments. Kerr had no interest in romantic relationships with women, and was generally assumed by those who knew him to be a repressed homosexual. The historian Michael Bloch wrote that it was very unlikely that the deeply religious Kerr ever engaged in homosexual relationships, but noted that he never married nor did he ever have a romantic relationship