Neville Chamberlain read and annotated Hitler’s Mein Kampf in its original German before he embarked on his policy of appeasement, says a new biography.

The former prime minister, who acquired a 1933 copy of the book, highlighted sections that he thought revealing of the German dictator’s mindset, and even added exclamation marks alongside some passages.

Chamberlain was struck by sections that underlined Hitler’s anti-Semitism, his faith in Aryan superiority and his sense of racial affinity with the British....