List of Famous people who died in 1940

Herbrand Arthur Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford was an English politician and peer. He was the son of Francis Russell, 9th Duke of Bedford and his wife Lady Elizabeth Sackville-West, daughter of George Sackville-West, 5th Earl De La Warr.

Léo Lagrange was a French Under-Secretary of State for Sports and for the Organisation of Leisure during the Popular Front (1936-1938). A member of the Éclaireurs de France scouting association during his youth, he joined the French Section of the Workers' International after the split at the Tours party congress in 1920 and wrote articles in Populaire (Popular), the press organ of the SFIO. Elected official appointed in 1932 at the time of the second Coalition of the left, he was then named under-secretary of State in the Popular Front government of Léon Blum. He participated in the organisation of the People's Olympiad in Barcelona, organized to counter the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin which were used as a propaganda instrument of Nazism.

Maria Nikolayevna Krasovskaya-Kalitinskaya was a Russian actress, theatre director and reader in drama, better known under her stage name Maria Germanova (Германова).

Maurice Leloir was a French illustrator, watercolourist, draftsman, printmaker, writer and collector.

Maurice Moscovich was a Russian American actor who was well-known for his roles in Yiddish theatre. His 14 films, which he made at the end of his life, include Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.

Gerald Paul Joseph Cajetan Carmel Antony Martin Strickland, 6th Count della Catena, 1st Baron Strickland, was a Maltese and British politician and peer, who served as Prime Minister of Malta, Governor of the Leeward Islands, Governor of Tasmania, Governor of Western Australia and Governor of New South Wales, in addition to sitting successively in the House of Commons and House of Lords in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, was a leading British newspaper proprietor who owned Associated Newspapers Ltd. He is best known, like his brother Alfred Harmsworth, later Viscount Northcliffe, for the development of the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. Rothermere was a pioneer of popular journalism.

Lieutenant Alfred Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 13th Duke of Hamilton and 10th Duke of Brandon TD, DL was a Scottish nobleman and sailor.