caretaker ministry, but lost the post in the general election won by Clement Attlee's Labour Party. Bracken lost his North Paddington seat but soon returned to the Commons, as Member of Parliament for Bournemouth in a November 1945 by-election. He was a relentless critic of the Labour government's policy of nationalisation and the retreat from empire. At the 1950 general election, he was returned for Bournemouth East and Christchurch, a seat he held until the general election the following year. In early 1952 he was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Bracken, of Christchurch in the County of Southampton, but never used the title or sat in the House of Lords. He retired from publishing in 1956. His best-known business accomplishment was merging the Financial News into the Financial Times in 1945. The latter had been published from Bracken House, London, clad in pink stone to match the colour of the paper, just south-east of St Paul's Cathedral, which was remodelled in 1989. At that stage, he was also publishing The Economist. In 1951, with his love of history, he helped found History Today magazine. Death A heavy smoker, Bracken died of oesophageal cancer on 8 August 1958, aged 57, in London. Although raised a Catholic, he refused the last rites of the Church despite efforts by his nephew, Rev Kevin Bracken, a Cistercian monk at Bethlehem Abbey, Portglenone, County Antrim, to persuade him. As he was unmarried, the viscountcy died with him. He was cremated without ceremony at Golders Green Crematorium in north London. His ashes were scattered behind the Cinque Ports at Romney Marshes of which "his master, Winston Churchill was the then Lord Warden" by Bracken's chauffeur Alex Haley. Legacy Bracken and his relationship with Churchill were the focus of an exhibit at The Little Museum of Dublin in 2016 called Churchill & the Irishman. The exhibit featured a collection of Bracken's letters to his mother. This was the first time that Bracken had been the subject of an exhibition. In popular culture In Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited, Bracken served as a model for the character of Rex Mottram. Bracken is featured in the 1981 TV mini series Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years, portrayed by Tim Pigott-Smith. In The Gathering Storm (2002), he is played by Anthony Brophy. It has been theorized that Bracken may have been the inspiration for Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four), as