to clamor for war against Egypt after President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the partly British-owned Compagnie universelle du canal maritime de Suez, an act that Beaverbrook considered to be intolerable. When the invasion of Egypt began in October 1956, Beaverbrook had the Daily Express support the war as a justified assertion of British national interests. Beaverbrook regarded the end of the Suez crisis with Britain being forced to withdraw under strong American-Soviet pressure to be a national humiliation, and much of the anti-Americanism he was to express in his last years related to bitterness over the Suez crisis. Beaverbrook likewise favored a hawkish line on the Cyprus Emergency as he used his newspapers to support keeping Cyprus a British colony and regarded the decision to grant Cyprus independence in 1960 again as a national humiliation. Aitken continued to live lavishly. Ascherson noted: "His life became a progress like a medieval king’s, cruising on Atlantic liners and luxurious yachts with a great retinue of servants, cronies, henchmen, useful politicians and pretty women. But the Beaver did not forget old comrades. The ageing Churchill was free to stay and paint in the sun at La Capponcina whenever he pleased, and their friendship grew closer until Beaverbrook’s death in 1964. He used his money and connections quietly to rescue many other lesser figures in trouble. A.J.P. Taylor justly called him ‘a foul-weather friend". He opposed both Britain's acceptance of post-war loans from America and Britain's application to join the European Economic Community in 1961. In 1953 he became chancellor-for-life of the University of New Brunswick through an Act of the local legislature. In 1960, the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan decided to have the United Kingdom join the Economic Europan Community (EEC) as the European Union was then called, but he waited until July 1961 to formally make the application at least in part out of the fear over the reaction of the Beaverbrook newspapers. Beaverbrook was strongly opposed to the application and used his newspapers to offer ferocious criticism of Macmillan's application to join the EEC, accusing him of a betrayal of the Commonwealth whom Beaverbrook continued to insist were Britain's natural allies. In 1960, the Daily Express was selling 4,300,000 copies per day, making it into Britain's most popular newspaper. He became the university's greatest benefactor, fulfilling the same role for the city of Fredericton and the province as a whole. He