Anne de Vere Chamberlain (née Cole; 1 June 1882 – 12 February 1967) was the wife of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain. A successful businessman when they married, he credited her with encouraging him into political life, and rising to the premiership.
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Biography
Anne de Vere Cole was born on 1 June 1882 to Major William Utting Cole, of West Woodhay House, Berkshire. Her mother, Mary de Vere, was Irish, and traced her descent to the 15th Earl of Oxford; she inherited Issercleran, Craughwell, County Galway, in 1888. Her brother was the noted prankster Horace de Vere Cole (1881–1936), who inherited the family seat some time after 1889; it was later owned by John Huston and then Merv Griffin and is now known as St. Cleran's House. From childhood Anne loved to travel, going abroad each year, later going to Canada and East Africa as a married woman. She married Neville Chamberlain in 1911, and remained his wife until his death in November 1940. They had two children, Dorothy and Frank.
At the time of her marriage her husband, a successful businessman, was already 41 years old and had expected to remain a bachelor. She encouraged and supported his entry into local politics and he was elected to the Birmingham City Council in November 1911. In 1914, just before the outbreak of the Great War, he was made an alderman and the following year was elected Lord Mayor of Birmingham. This marked the beginning of a public career in which Anne Chamberlain was to be Neville's constant companion, helper and trusted colleague, and to share in full his interests in housing and other political and social activities after his election as MP for the Birmingham constituencies of first Ladywood and then Edgbaston.