Biography

British Foreign Secretary, 1966-1968.

One of the most prominent figures in the British Labour Party in the 1950s and 1960s, he ran for the leadership of the party against Harold Wilson in 1963 and lost to him; he became one of Wilson's chief colleagues and was Deputy Prime Minister for a time after Wilson's election victory in October of 1964.

During the years of the Labour Government of 1964-70, it rapidly became known that Brown was an alcoholic whose drinking was out of control, but this was never publicly admitted. The satirical magazine "Private Eye" seized on the phrase "tired and emotional", once used as a euphemism in a press release about him, and employed it constantly, not only about Brown, but about anyone else who appeared in public whilst drunk. The phrase soon entered the language, and its real meaning was known to all.

Brown once asked a papal nuncio to dance with him at a diplomatic reception. The nuncio was dressed in the full regalia of his office, and Brown drunkenly assumed he was a woman.

He was the Labour Member of Parliament for the constituency of Belper, in Derbyshire, for almost exactly 25 years, from July of 1945 to June of 1970. After he was defeated in the 1970 General Election, he was elevated to the peerage and became Lord George-Brown.