A memorial plaque has been unveiled at Westminster in honour of Stanley Baldwin - Conservative Prime Minister three times in the 1920s and 1930s - who died 50 years ago this week.

Considering this achievement, he is relatively little known, perhaps due to his self-effacing character.

One apocryphal anecdote has Prime Minister Baldwin travelling by train when a fellow-passenger asks him whether he was at Harrow in 1884. "I was indeed," Baldwin replies. "Thought so," says the other passenger, "But tell me, what are you doing now?"

Another reason for his low profile might be an accident of timing - his premierships came just after the colourful David Lloyd George and just before the era of national crisis under Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill.

His was also the era of rapid Liberal decline and the birth of Labour as a governing party, giving historians more dynamic issues on which to focus.

Stanley Baldwin was the son of a Worcestershire ironworks owner. The firm was run on paternalistic lines and this, combined with his deep, romanticised love of the English countryside, coloured his approach to politics - consensus, not confrontation was his policy.

Similarly, his personal approach to work was extremely relaxed when compared to the pressure which modern leaders work under. Baldwin preferred to leave his ministers to their own devices and to go on his regular holidays no matter what affairs of state were pressing.

He will be mainly remembered for his successful handling of the General Strike of 1926 and the abdication crisis 10 years later, and for his failure to order Britain's rearmament in the face of Hitler's increasing aggression from 1933 onwards.

Detailed biography:

Part 1: Formative Years, Into Parliament, the Ousting of Lloyd George

Part 2: Prime Minister Baldwin, the General Strike and "Safety First"

Part 3: National Government, Abdication Crisis and the Failure to Re-arm

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