Photograph of Sir James Craig, 1922.

Prime Minister of Northern Ireland during the 'Phoney War' period. He is pictured here at the opening of the Northern Ireland Parliament. Ill health and exhaustion had dogged his efforts after 1921-2. By 1938, the head of the regional civil service, Wilfred Spender, described him as “too unwell to carry on”; he was then incapable of more than an hour’s work per day and prone to making important decisions in a casual, hasty manner; he remained in office out of financial necessity and to satisfy the social ambitions of his wife. The incompetence of his government was more difficult to defend or conceal in the context of war.