Harold Macmillan

Early life

Family

Maurice Harold Macmillan was born on 10 February 1894 at 52 Cadogan Place in Belgravia, London, to Maurice Crawford Macmillan, a publisher, and the former Helen (Nellie) Artie Tarleton Belles, an artist and socialite from Spencer, Indiana. He had two brothers, Daniel, eight years his senior, and Arthur, four years his senior. His paternal grandfather, Daniel MacMillan, who founded Macmillan Publishers, was the son of a Scottish crofter from the Isle of Arran. Macmillan considered himself a Scot.

Education and early political views

Macmillan received an intensive early education, closely guided by his American mother. He learned French at home every morning from a succession of nursery maids, and exercised daily at Mr Macpherson's Gymnasium and Dancing Academy, around the corner from the family home. From the age of six or seven he received introductory lessons in classical Latin and Greek at Mr Gladstone's day school, close by in Sloane Square.

Macmillan attended Summer Fields School, Oxford (1903–1906). He was Third Scholar at Eton College, but his time there (1906–1910) was blighted by recurrent illness, starting with a near-fatal attack of pneumonia in his first half (term); he missed his final year after being taken ill, and was taught at home by private tutors (1910–1911), notably Ronald Knox, who did much to instil his High Church Anglicanism. He won an exhibition (scholarship) to Balliol College, Oxford.

In his youth, he was an admirer of the policies and leadership of a succession of Liberal prime ministers, starting with Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who came to power when Macmillan was 11 years old and H. H. Asquith, whom he later described as having "intellectual sincerity and moral nobility", and particularly of Asquith's successor, David Lloyd George, whom he regarded as a "man of action", likely to accomplish his goals.

Macmillan went up to Balliol College in 1912, where he joined many political societies. His political opinions at this stage were an eclectic mix of moderate conservatism, moderate liberalism and Fabian socialism. He read avidly about Benjamin Disraeli, but was also particularly impressed by a speech by Lloyd George at the Oxford Union Society in 1913, where he had become a member. Macmillan was a protégé of the president of the Union Society Walter Monckton, later a Cabinet colleague; as such, he became secretary then junior treasurer (elected unopposed in March 1914, then an unusual occurrence) of the Union, and would in his biographers' view "almost certainly" have been president had the war not intervened. He obtained a First in Honour Moderations, informally known as 'Mods' (consisting of Latin and Greek, the first half of the four-year Oxford Literae Humaniores course, informally known as "Greats"), in 1914. With his final exams over two years away, he enjoyed an idyllic Trinity term at Oxford, just before the outbreak of the First World War.

War service

Volunteering as soon as war was declared, Macmillan was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant in the King's Royal Rifle Corps on 19 November 1914. Promoted to lieutenant on 30 January 1915, he soon transferred to the Grenadier Guards. He fought on the front lines in France, where the casualty rate was high, including the probability of an "early violent death". He served with distinction and was wounded on three occasions. Shot in the right hand and receiving a glancing bullet wound to the head in the Battle of Loos in September 1915, Macmillan was sent to Lennox Gardens in Chelsea for hospital treatment, then joined a reserve battalion at Chelsea Barracks from January to March 1916, until his hand had healed. He then returned to the front lines in France. Leading an advance platoon in the Battle of Flers–Courcelette (part of the Battle of the Somme) in September 1916, he was severely wounded, and lay for over twelve hours in a shell hole, sometimes feigning death when Germans passed, and reading Aeschylus in the original Greek. Raymond Asquith, eldest son of the prime minister, was a brother officer in Macmillan's regiment and was killed that month.

Macmillan spent the final two years of the war in King Edward VII's Hospital in Grosvenor Gardens undergoing a series of operations. He was still on crutches at the Armistice of 11 November 1918. His hip wound took four years to heal completely, and he was left with a slight shuffle to his walk and a limp grip in his right hand from his previous wound, which affected his handwriting.

Macmillan saw himself as both a "gownsman" and a "swordsman" and would later display open contempt for other politicians (e.g. Rab Butler, Hugh Gaitskell, Harold Wilson) who had not seen military service in either World War.

Canadian aide-de-campship

Of the scholars and exhibitioners of his year, only he and one other survived the war. As a result, he refused to return to Oxford to complete his degree, saying the university would never be the same; in later years he joked that he had been "sent down by the Kaiser".

Owing to the impending contraction of the Army after the war, a regular commission in the Grenadiers was out of the question. However, at the end of 1918 Macmillan joined the Guards Reserve Battalion at Chelsea Barracks for "light duties". On one occasion he had to command reliable troops in a nearby park as a unit of Guardsmen was briefly refusing to reembark for France, although the incident was resolved peacefully. The incident prompted an inquiry from the War Office as to whether the Guards Reserve Battalion "could be relied on".

Macmillan then served in Ottawa, Canada, in 1919 as aide-de-camp (ADC) to Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, then Governor General of Canada, and his future father-in-law. The engagement of Captain Macmillan to the Duke's daughter Lady Dorothy was announced on 7 January 1920. He relinquished his commission on 1 April 1920. As was common for contemporary former officers, he continued to be known as 'Captain Macmillan' until the early 1930s and was listed as such in every general election between 1923 and 1931. As late as his North African posting of 1942–43 he reminded Churchill that he held the rank of captain in the Guards reserve.

Macmillan Publishers

On his return to London in 1920 he joined the family publishing firm Macmillan Publishers as a junior partner. In 1936, Harold and his brother Daniel took control of the firm, with the former focusing on the political and non-fiction side of the business. Harold resigned from the company on appointment to ministerial office in 1940. He resumed working with the firm from 1945 to 1951 when the party was in opposition.

Personal life

According to Michael Bloch, there have long been rumours that Macmillan was expelled from Eton for homosexuality. Macmillan's biographer D. R. Thorpe is of the view that he was removed by his mother when she discovered that he was being "used" by older boys. Dick Leonard reports that Alistair Horne refers to "inevitable rumours" and that "he left for the 'usual reasons' for boys to be expelled from public schools".

Marriage

Macmillan married Lady Dorothy Cavendish, the daughter of the 9th Duke of Devonshire, on 21 April 1920. Her great-uncle was Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, who was leader of the Liberal Party in the 1870s, and a close colleague of William Ewart Gladstone, Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Salisbury. Lady Dorothy was also descended from William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, who served as prime minister from 1756 to 1757 in communion with Newcastle and Pitt the Elder. Her nephew William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, married Kathleen Kennedy, a sister of John F. Kennedy.

In 1929, Lady Dorothy began a lifelong affair with the Conservative politician Robert Boothby, an arrangement that scandalised high society but remained unknown to the general public. Philip Frere, a partner in Frere Cholmely solicitors, urged Macmillan not to divorce his wife, which at that time would have been fatal to a public career even for the "innocent party". Macmillan and Lady Dorothy lived largely separate lives in private thereafter. The stress caused by that may have contributed to Macmillan's nervous breakdown in 1931. He was often treated with condescension by his aristocratic in-laws and was observed to be a sad and isolated figure at Chatsworth in the 1930s. John Campbell suggests that Macmillan's humiliation was first a major cause of his odd and rebellious behaviour in the 1930s then, in subsequent decades, made him a harder and more ruthless politician than his rivals Eden and Butler.

The Macmillans had four children:

Maurice Macmillan, Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden (1921–1984), Conservative politician and publisher. Married the Hon. Katharine Ormsby-Gore, daughter of the 4th Baron Harlech. His father outlived him by nearly three years.

Lady Caroline Macmillan (1923–2016). Married Julian Faber; five children.

Lady Catherine Macmillan (1926–1991). Married Julian Amery (later Baron Amery of Lustleigh), Conservative politician; four children.

Sarah Macmillan (1930–1970). A family rumour that Boothby was her natural father has been discounted by the most recent and detailed study. Married Andrew Heath in 1953; two children. Having had an abortion in 1951, she was unable to have children of her own and the couple adopted two sons. She had an unhappy life, which was blighted by a drinking problem, and died aged only 40, her father outliving her by 16 years.

Political career, 1924–1951

Member of Parliament (1924–1929)

Macmillan contested the depressed northern industrial constituency of Stockton-on-Tees in 1923. The campaign cost him about £200–£300 out of his own pocket; at that time candidates were often expected to fund their own election campaigns. The collapse in the Liberal vote let him win in 1924. In 1927, four MPs, including Boothby and Macmillan, published a short book advocating radical measures. In 1928, Macmillan was described by his political hero, and now Parliamentary colleague, David Lloyd George, as a "born rebel".

Macmillan lost his seat in 1929 in the face of high regional unemployment. He almost became Conservative candidate for the safe seat of Hitchin in 1931. However the sitting MP, Guy Kindersley cancelled his retirement plans, in part because of his own association with the anti-Baldwin rebels and his suspicion of Macmillan's sympathy for Oswald Mosley's promises of radical measures to reduce unemployment. Instead, the resignation of the new candidate at Stockton allowed Macmillan to be re-selected there, and he returned to the House of Commons for his old seat in 1931.

Member of Parliament (1931–1939)

Macmillan spent the 1930s on the backbenches. In March 1932 he published "The State and Industry" (not to be confused with his earlier pamphlet "Industry and the State"). In September 1932 he made his first visit to the Soviet Union. Macmillan also published "The Next Step". He advocated cheap money and state direction of investment. In 1933 he was the sole author of "Reconstruction: A Plea for a National Unity". In 1935 he was one of 15 MPs to write "Planning for Employment". His next publication, "The Next Five Years", was overshadowed by Lloyd George's proposed "New Deal" in 1935. Macmillan Press also published the work of the economist John Maynard Keynes.

Macmillan resigned the government whip (but not the Conservative party one) in protest at the lifting of sanctions on Italy after her conquest of Abyssinia. "Chips" Channon described him as the "unprepossessing, bookish, eccentric member for Stockton-on-Tees" and recorded (8 July 1936) that he had been sent a "frigid note" by Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Baldwin later mentioned that he had survived by steering a middle course between Macmillan and John Gretton, an extreme right-winger.

The Next Five Years Group, to which Macmillan had belonged, was wound up in November 1937. His book The Middle Way appeared in June 1938, advocating a broadly centrist political philosophy both domestically and internationally. Macmillan took control of the magazine New Outlook and made sure it published political tracts rather than purely theoretical work.

In 1936, Macmillan proposed the creation of a cross-party forum of antifascists to create democratic unity but his ideas were rejected by the leadership of both the Labour and Conservative parties.

Macmillan supported Chamberlain's first flight for talks with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, but not his subsequent flights to Bad Godesberg and Munich. After Munich he was looking for a "1931 in reverse", i.e. a Labour-dominated coalition in which some Conservatives would serve, the reverse of the Conservative-dominated coalition which had governed Britain since 1931. He supported the independent candidate, Lindsay, at the 1938 Oxford by-election. He wrote a pamphlet "The Price of Peace" calling for alliance between Britain, France and the USSR, but expecting Poland to make territorial "accommodation" to Germany (i.e. give up the Danzig corridor). In "Economic Aspects of Defence", early in 1939, he called for a Ministry of Supply.

Phoney War (1939–1940)

Macmillan visited Finland in February 1940, then the subject of great sympathy in Britain as it was being invaded by the USSR, then allied to Nazi Germany. His last speech from the backbenches was to attack the government for not doing enough to help Finland. Britain was saved from a potentially embarrassing commitment when the Winter War ended in March 1940.

Macmillan voted against the Government in the Norway Debate of May 1940, helping to bring down Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, and tried to join in with Colonel Josiah Wedgwood singing "Rule, Britannia!" in the House of Commons Chamber.

Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Supply (1940–1942)

Macmillan finally attained office by serving in the wartime coalition government as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply from 1940. Channon commented (29 May 1940) that there was "some amusement over Harold Macmillan's so obvious enjoyment of his new position".

Macmillan's job was to provide armaments and other equipment to the British Army and Royal Air Force. He travelled up and down the country to co-ordinate production, working with some success under Lord Beaverbrook to increase the supply and quality of armoured vehicles.

Colonial Under-Secretary (1942)

Macmillan was appointed Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1942, in his own words "leaving a madhouse to enter a mausoleum". Though a junior minister he was a member of the Privy Council, and he spoke in the House of Commons for Colonial Secretaries Lord Moyne and Lord Cranborne. Macmillan was given responsibility for increasing colonial production and trade, and signalled the future policy direction when in June 1942 he declared:

The governing principle of the Colonial Empire should be the principle of partnership between the various elements composing it. Out of partnership comes understanding and friendship. Within the fabric of the Commonwealth lies the future of the Colonial territories.

Macmillan predicted that the Conservatives faced landslide defeat after the war, causing Channon to write (6 Sep 1944) of "the foolish prophecy of that nice ass Harold Macmillan". In October 1942 Harold Nicolson recorded Macmillan as predicting "extreme socialism" after the war. Macmillan nearly resigned when Oliver Stanley was appointed Secretary of State in November 1942, as he would no longer be the spokesman in the Commons as he had been under Cranborne. Brendan Bracken advised him not to quit.

Minister Resident in the Mediterranean (1942–1945)

After Harry Crookshank had refused the job, Macmillan attained real power and Cabinet rank late in 1942 as British Minister Resident at Algiers in the Mediterranean, recently liberated in Operation Torch. He reported directly to the Prime Minister instead of to the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden. Oliver Lyttelton had a similar job at Cairo, while Robert Murphy was Macmillan's US counterpart. Macmillan built a rapport with US General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean (SACMED), which proved helpful in his career, and Richard Crossman later recalled that Macmillan's "Greeks in the Roman Empire" metaphor dated from this time (i.e., that as the US replaced Britain as the world's leading power, British politicians and diplomats should aim to guide her in the same way that Greek slaves and freedmen had advised powerful Romans). Macmillan told Crossman: "We, my dear Crossman, are the Greeks in the American empire. You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans—great big, vulgar bustling people, more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues, but also more corrupt. We must run AFHQ (Allied Forces Headquarters) as the Greek slaves ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius". At the Casablanca Conference Macmillan helped to secure US acceptance, if not recognition, of the Free French leader Charles de Gaulle. Macmillan wrote in his diary during the Casablanca conference: "I christened the two personalities the Emperor of the East and the Emperor of the West and indeed it was rather like a meeting of the late Roman empire". For Macmillan, the "remarkable and romantic episodes" as President Roosevelt met Prime Minister Churchill in Casablanca convinced him that personal diplomacy was the best way to deal with Americans, which later influenced his foreign policy as prime minister.

On 22 February 1943, Macmillan was badly burned in a plane crash, re-entering the wreckage to rescue a Frenchman and escaping just before the plane exploded. He had to have a plaster cast put on his face. In his delirium he imagined himself back in a Somme casualty clearing station and asked for a message to be passed to his mother, now dead.

Together with Gladwyn Jebb he helped to negotiate the Italian armistice in August 1943, between the fall of Sicily and the Salerno Landings. This caused friction with Eden and the Foreign Office. He was based at Caserta for the rest of the war. He was appointed UK High Commissioner for the Advisory Council for Italy late in 1943. He visited London in October 1943 and again clashed with Eden. Eden appointed Duff Cooper as Representative to the Free French government in Algeria (after the liberation of mainland France, he later continued as Ambassador to France from November 1944) and Noel Charles as Ambassador to Italy to reduce Macmillan's influence. In May 1944 Macmillan infuriated Eden by demanding an early peace treaty with Italy (at that time a pro-Allied regime under Badoglio held some power in the southern, liberated, part of Italy), a move which Churchill favoured. In June 1944 he argued for a British-led thrust up the Ljubljana Gap into Central Europe (Operation "Armpit") instead of the planned diversion of US and Free French forces to the South of France (Operation Dragoon). This proposal impressed Churchill and General Alexander, but did not meet with American approval. Eden sent out Robert Dixon to abolish the job of Resident Minister, there being then no job for Macmillan back in the UK, but he managed to prevent his job being abolished. Churchill visited Italy in August 1944. On 14 September 1944 Macmillan was appointed Chief Commissioner of the Allied Control Commission for Italy (in succession to General Noel Mason-MacFarlane). He continued to be British Minister Resident at Allied Headquarters and British political adviser to "Jumbo" Wilson, now Supreme Commander, Mediterranean. On 10 November 1944 he was appointed Acting President of the Allied Commission (the Supreme Commander being President).

Air Secretary (1945)

Macmillan toyed with an offer to succeed Duff Cooper as MP for the safe Conservative seat of Westminster St George's. Criticised locally for his long absence, he suggested that Lady Dorothy stand for Stockton in 1945, as she had been nursing the seat for five years. She was apparently willing. However, it was thought better for him to be seen to defend his seat, and Lord Beaverbrook had already spoken to Churchill to arrange that Macmillan be given another seat in the event of defeat.

Macmillan returned to England after the European war, feeling himself 'almost a stranger at home'. He was Secretary of State for Air for two months in Churchill's caretaker government, 'much of which was taken up in electioneering', there being 'nothing much to be done in the way of forward planning'.

Opposition (1945–1951)

Macmillan indeed lost Stockton in the landslide Labour victory of July 1945, but returned to Parliament in the November 1945 by-election in Bromley. In his diary Harold Nicolson noted the feelings of the Tory backbenchers: "They feel that Winston is too old and Anthony (Eden) too weak. They want Harold Macmillan to lead them."

He was a member of the British delegation to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe from 1949 to 1951, and played a prominent role – as a key aide and ally of Winston Churchill – in pressing for greater European integration as a bulwark against Soviet totalitarianism and to prevent a recurrence of the horrors of Nazi rule.

Although Macmillan played an important role in drafting the "Industrial Charter" ("Crossbencher" in the Sunday Express called it the second edition of The Middle Way) he now, as MP for a safe seat, adopted a somewhat more right-wing public persona, defending private enterprise and fiercely opposing the Labour government in the House of Commons.

Political career, 1951–1957

Housing Minister (1951–1954)

With the Conservative victory in 1951 Macmillan became Minister of Housing & Local Government under Churchill, who entrusted him with fulfilling the pledge to build 300,000 houses per year (up from the previous target of 200,000 a year), made in response to a speech from the floor at the 1950 Party Conference. Macmillan thought at first that Housing, which ranked 13 out of 16 in the Cabinet list, was a poisoned chalice, writing in his diary (28 October 1951) that it was "not my cup of tea at all ... I really haven't a clue how to set about the job". It meant obtaining scarce steel, cement and timber when the Treasury were trying to maximise exports and minimise imports. 'It is a gamble—it will make or mar your political career,' Churchill said, 'but every humble home will bless your name if you succeed.'

By July 1952 Macmillan was already criticising Butler (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) in his diary, accusing him of "dislik(ing) and fear(ing) him"; in fact there is no evidence that Butler regarded Macmillan as a rival at this stage. In April 1953 Beaverbrook encouraged Macmillan to think that in a future leadership contest he might emerge in a dead heat between Eden and Butler, as the young Beaverbrook (Max Aitken as he had been at the time) had helped Bonar Law to do in 1911. In July 1953 Macmillan considered postponing his gall bladder operation in case Churchill, who had just suffered a serious stroke while Eden was also in hospital, had to step down.

Macmillan achieved his housing target by the end of 1953, a year ahead of schedule.

Minister of Defence (1954–1955)

Macmillan was Minister of Defence from October 1954, but found his authority restricted by Churchill's personal involvement. In the opinion of The Economist: 'He gave the impression that his own undoubted capacity for imaginative running of his own show melted way when an august superior was breathing down his neck.'

A major theme of his tenure at Defence was the ministry's growing reliance on the nuclear deterrent, in the view of some critics, to the detriment of conventional forces. The Defence White Paper of February 1955, announcing the decision to produce the hydrogen bomb, received cross-party support.

"It breaks my heart to see the lion-hearted Churchill begin to sink into a sort of Pétain", Macmillan wrote in his diary as the Prime Minister's mental and physical powers visibly decayed. Macmillan was one of the few ministers brave enough to tell Churchill to his face that it was time for him to retire. Philippe Pétain, a successful French general in the First World War, had become senile while heading the pro-German Vichy Regime.

During the Second World War Macmillan's toothy grin, baggy trousers and rimless glasses had given him, as his biographer puts it, "an air of an early Bolshevik leader". By the 1950s he had had his teeth capped, grew his hair in a more shapely style, wore Savile Row suits and walked with the ramrod bearing of a former Guards officer, acquiring the distinguished appearance of his later career. Campbell writes "there has been no more startling personal reinvention in British politics". He very often wore either an Old Etonian or a Brigade of Guards tie. Campbell also suggests that Harold Wilson's image change during Macmillan's premiership from "boring young statistician into lovable Yorkshire comic" was made in conscious imitation of Macmillan.

Foreign Secretary (1955)

Macmillan was Foreign Secretary in April–December 1955 in the government of Anthony Eden, who had taken over as prime minister from the retiring Churchill. Returning from the Geneva Summit of that year he made headlines by declaring: 'There ain't gonna be no war.' Of the role of Foreign Secretary Macmillan observed:

Nothing he can say can do very much good and almost anything he may say may do a great deal of harm. Anything he says that is not obvious is dangerous; whatever is not trite is risky. He is forever poised between the cliché and the indiscretion.

Chancellor of the Exchequer (1955–1957)

Macmillan was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in December 1955. He had enjoyed his eight months as Foreign Secretary and did not wish to move. He insisted on being "undisputed head of the home front" and that Eden's de facto deputy Rab Butler, whom he was replacing as Chancellor, not have the title "Deputy Prime Minister" and not be treated as senior to him. He even tried (in vain) to demand that Salisbury, not Butler, should preside over the Cabinet in Eden's absence. Macmillan later claimed in his memoirs that he had still expected Butler, his junior by eight years, to succeed Eden, but correspondence with Lord Woolton at the time makes clear that Macmillan was very much thinking of the succession. As early as January 1956 he told Eden's press secretary William D. Clark that it would be "interesting to see how long Anthony can stay in the saddle".

Macmillan planned to reverse the 6d cut in income tax which Butler had made a year previously, but backed off after a "frank talk" with Butler, who threatened resignation, on 28 March 1956. He settled for spending cuts instead, and himself threatened resignation until he was allowed to cut bread and milk subsidies, something the Cabinet had not permitted Butler to do.

One of his innovations at the Treasury was the introduction of premium bonds, announced in his budget of 17 April 1956. Although the Labour Opposition initially decried them as a 'squalid raffle', they proved an immediate hit with the public, with £1,000 won in the first prize draw in June 1957.

A young John Major attended the presentation of the budget, and attributes his political ambitions to this event.

In November 1956, Britain invaded Egypt in collusion with France and Israel in the Suez Crisis. According to Labour Shadow Chancellor Harold Wilson, Macmillan was 'first in, first out': first very supportive of the invasion, then a prime mover in Britain's humiliating withdrawal in the wake of the financial crisis caused by pressure from the US government. Since the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, relations between Britain and Egypt had deteriorated. The Egyptian government, which came to be dominated by Gamal Abdel Nasser, was opposed to the British military presence in the Arab World. The Egyptian nationalisation of the Suez Canal by Nasser on 26 July 1956 prompted the British government and the French government of Guy Mollet to commence plans for invading Egypt, regaining the canal, and toppling Nasser. Macmillan wrote in his diary: "If Nasser 'gets away with it', we are done for. The whole Arab world will despise us ... Nuri [es-Said, British-backed Prime Minister of Iraq] and our friends will fall. It may well be the end of British influence and strength forever. So, in the last resort, we must use force and defy opinion, here and overseas".

Prime Minister (1957–1963)

First government, 1957–1959

From the start of his premiership, Macmillan set out to portray an image of calm and style, in contrast to his excitable predecessor. He silenced the klaxon on the Prime Ministerial car, which Eden had used frequently. He advertised his love of reading Anthony Trollope and Jane Austen, and on the door of the Private Secretaries' room at Number Ten he hung a quote from The Gondoliers: "Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles every knot".

Macmillan filled government posts with 35 Old Etonians, seven of them in Cabinet. He was also devoted to family members: when Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire was later appointed (Minister for Colonial Affairs from 1963 to 1964 among other positions) he described his uncle's behaviour as "the greatest act of nepotism ever".

Macmillan's Defence Minister, Duncan Sandys, wrote at the time: "Eden had no gift for leadership; under Macmillan as PM everything is better, Cabinet meetings are quite transformed". Many ministers found Macmillan to be more decisive and brisk than either Churchill or Eden had been. Another of Macmillan's ministers, Charles Hill, stated that Macmillan dominated Cabinet meetings "by sheer superiority of mind and of judgement". Macmillan frequently made allusions to history, literature and the classics at cabinet meetings, giving him a reputation as being both learned and entertaining, though many ministers found his manner too authoritarian. Macmillan had no "inner cabinet", and instead maintained one-on-one relationships with a few senior ministers such as Rab Butler who usually served as acting prime minister when Macmillan was on one of his frequent visits abroad. Selwyn Lloyd described Macmillan as treating most of his ministers like "junior officers in a unit he commanded". Lloyd recalled that Macmillan: "regarded the Cabinet as an instrument to play upon, a body to be molded to his will...very rarely did he fail to get his way" Macmillan generally allowed his ministers much leeway in managing their portfolios, and only intervened if he felt something had gone wrong. Macmillan was especially close to his three private secretaries, Tom Bligh, Freddie Bishop and Philip de Zulueta, who were his favourite advisers. Many cabinet ministers often complained that Macmillan took the advice of his private secretaries more seriously than he did their own.

He was nicknamed "Supermac" in 1958 by the cartoonist Victor Weisz, who intended to suggest that Macmillan was trying set himself up as a "Superman" figure. It was intended as mockery but backfired, coming to be used in a neutral or friendly fashion. Weisz tried to label him with other names, including "Mac the Knife" at the time of widespread cabinet changes in 1962, but none caught on.

Second government, 1959–1963

Britain's balance of payments problems led Chancellor Selwyn Lloyd to impose a seven-month wage freeze in 1961 and, amongst other factors, this caused the government to lose popularity and a series of by-elections in March 1962, of which the most famous was Orpington on 14 March. Butler leaked to the Daily Mail on 11 July 1962 that a major reshuffle was imminent. Macmillan feared for his own position and later (1 August) claimed to Lloyd that Butler, who sat for a rural East Anglian seat likely to suffer from EC agricultural protectionism, had been planning to split the party over EC entry (there is no evidence that this was so).

In the 1962 cabinet reshuffle known as the "Night of the Long Knives", Macmillan sacked eight Ministers, including Selwyn Lloyd. The Cabinet changes were widely seen as a sign of panic, and the young Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe said of Macmillan's dismissals, "greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down his friends for his life". Macmillan was openly criticised by his predecessor Lord Avon, an almost unprecedented act.

Macmillan supported the creation of the National Economic Development Council (NEDC, known as "Neddy"), which was announced in the summer of 1961 and first met in 1962. However, the National Incomes Commission (NIC, known as "Nicky"), set up in October 1962 to institute controls on income as part of his growth-without-inflation policy, proved less effective. This was largely due to employers and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) boycotting it. A further series of subtle indicators and controls was introduced during his premiership.

The report The Reshaping of British Railways (or Beeching I report) was published on 27 March 1963. The report starts by quoting the brief provided by the prime minister, Harold Macmillan, from 1960, "First, the industry must be of a size and pattern suited to modern conditions and prospects. In particular, the railway system must be modelled to meet current needs, and the modernisation plan must be adapted to this new shape", and with the premise that the railways should be run as a profitable business. This led to the notorious Beeching Axe, destroying many miles of permanent way and severing towns from the railway network.

In the age of jet aircraft Macmillan travelled more than any previous prime minister, apart from Lloyd George who made many trips to conferences in 1919–22. Macmillan planned an important role in setting up a four power summit in Paris to discuss the Berlin crisis that was supposed to open in May 1960, but which Khrushchev refused to attend owing to the U-2 incident. Macmillan pressed Eisenhower to apologise to Khrushchev, which the president refused to do. Macmillan's failure to make Eisenhower "say sorry" to Khrushchev forced him to reconsider his "Greeks and Romans" foreign policy as he privately conceded that could no "longer talk usefully to the Americans".

Relations with the United States

The special relationship with the United States continued after the election of President John F. Kennedy, whose sister Kathleen Cavendish had married William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, the nephew of Macmillan's wife. Macmillan initially was concerned that the Irish-American Catholic Kennedy might be an Anglophobe, which led Macmillan, who knew of Kennedy's special interest in the Third World, to suggest that Britain and the United States spend more money on aid to the Third World. The emphasis on aid to the Third World also coincided well with Macmillan's "one nation conservatism" as he wrote in a letter to Kennedy advocating reforms to capitalism to ensure full employment: "If we fail in this, Communism will triumph, not by war or even by subversion but by seemingly to be a better way of bringing people material comforts".

Macmillan was scheduled to visit the United States in April 1961, but with the Pathet Lao winning a series of victories in the Laotian Civil War, Macmillan was summoned on what he called the "Laos dash" for an emergency summit with Kennedy in Key West on 26 March 1961. Macmillan was strongly opposed to the idea of sending British troops to fight in Laos, but was afraid of damaging relations with the United States if he did not, making him very apprehensive as he set out for Key West, especially as he had never met Kennedy before. Macmillan was especially opposed to intervention in Laos as he had been warned by his Chiefs of Staff on 4 January 1961 that if Western troops entered Laos, then China would probably intervene in Laos as Mao Zedong had made it quite clear he would not accept Western forces in any nation that bordered China.

The same report stated that a war with China in Laos would "be a bottomless pit in which our limited military resources would rapidly disappear". Kennedy for his part wanted Britain to commit forces to Laos if the United States did for political reasons. The meeting in Key West was very tense as Macmillan was heard to mutter "He's pushing me hard, but I won't give way". Macmillan did reluctantly agree if the Americans intervened in Laos, then so too would Britain. The Laos crisis had a major crisis in Anglo-Thai relations as the Thais pressed for armed forces of all SEATO members to brought to "Charter Yellow", a state of heightened alert that the British representative to SEATO vetoed. The Thais wanted to change the voting procedure for SEATO from requiring unanimous consent to a three-quarter majority, a measure that Britain vetoed, causing the Thais to lose interest in SEATO.

Wind of Change

Macmillan's first government had seen the first phase of the sub-Saharan African independence movement, which accelerated under his second government. The most problematic of the colonies was the Central African Federation, which had united Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland together in 1953 largely out of the fear that the white population of Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) might want to join South Africa, which had since 1948 had been led by Afrikaner nationalists distinctly unfriendly to Britain. Though the Central African Federation had been presented as a multi-racial attempt to develop the region, the federation had been unstable right from the start with the black population charging that the whites had been given a privileged position.

Macmillan felt that if the costs of holding onto a particular territory outweighed the benefits then it should be dispensed with. During the Kenyan Emergency, the British authorities tried to protect the Kikuyu population from the Mau Mau guerrillas (who called themselves the "Land and Freedom Army") by interning the Kikuyu in camps. A scandal erupted when the guards at the Hola camp committed the Hola massacre in which they publicly beat 11 prisoners to death on 3 March 1959, which attracted much adverse publicity as the news filtered out from Kenya to the United Kingdom. Many in the British media compared the living conditions in the Kenyan camps to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, saying that the people in the camps were emaciated and sickly. The report of the Devlin Commission in July 1959 concerning the suppression of demonstrators in Nyasaland (modern-day Malawi) called Nyasaland "a police state".

In the aftermath of criticism about colonial policies in Kenya and Nyasland, Macmillan from 1959 onward started to see the African colonies as a liability, arguing at cabinet meetings that the level of force required to hang onto them would result in more domestic criticism, international opprobrium, costly wars, and would allow the Soviet Union to establish influence in the Third World by supporting self-styled "liberation" movements that would just make things worse. After securing a third term for the Conservatives in 1959 he appointed Iain Macleod as Colonial Secretary. Macleod greatly accelerated decolonisation and by the time he was moved to Conservative Party chairman and Leader of the Commons in 1961 he had made the decision to give independence to Nigeria, Tanganyika, Kenya, Nyasaland (as Malawi) and Northern Rhodesia (as Zambia). Macmillan embarked on his "Wind of Change" tour of Africa, starting in Ghana on 6 January 1960. He made the famous 'wind of change' speech in Cape Town on 3 February 1960. It is considered a landmark in the process of decolonisation.

End of premiership

By the early 1960s, many were starting to find Macmillan's courtly and urbane Edwardian manners anachronistic, and satirical journals such as Private Eye and the television show That Was the Week That Was mercilessly mocked him as a doddering, clueless leader. Macmillan's handling of the Vassall affair – in which an Admiralty clerk, John Vassall, was convicted in October 1962 of passing secrets to the Soviet Union – undermined his "Super-Mac" reputation for competence. D. R. Thorpe writes that from January 1963 "Macmillan's strategy lay in ruins", leaving him looking for a "graceful exit". The Vassall affair turned the press against him. In the same month, opposition leader Hugh Gaitskell died suddenly at the age of 56. With a general election due before the end of the following year, Gaitskell's death threw the future of British politics into fresh doubt. The following month Harold Wilson was elected as the new Labour leader, and he proved to be a popular choice with the public.

The Profumo affair of 1963 permanently damaged the credibility of Macmillan's government. The revelation of the affair between John Profumo (Secretary of State for War) and an alleged call-girl, Christine Keeler, who was simultaneously sleeping with the Soviet naval attache Captain Yevgeny Ivanov made it appear that Macmillan had lost control of his government and of events in general. In the ensuing Parliamentary debate he was seen as a pathetic figure, while Nigel Birch declared, in the words of Browning on Wordsworth, that it would be "Never glad confident morning again!" On 17 June 1963, he survived a Parliamentary vote with a majority of 69, one fewer than had been thought necessary for his survival, and was afterwards joined in the smoking room only by his son and son-in-law, not by any Cabinet minister. However, Butler and Reginald Maudling (who was very popular with backbench MPs at that time) declined to push for his resignation, especially after a tide of support from Conservative activists around the country. Many of the salacious revelations about the sex lives of "Establishment" figures during the Profumo affair damaged the image of "the Establishment" that Macmillan was seen as a part of, giving him the image by 1963 of a "failing representative of a decadent elite".

By the summer of 1963 Conservative Party Chairman Lord Poole was urging the ageing Macmillan to retire. The full Denning report into the Profumo Scandal was published on 26 September 1963.

Macmillan had a meeting with Butler on 11 September and was careful to keep his options open (retire now, retire in the New Year, or fight the next election). He talked the matter over with his son Maurice and other senior ministers. Over lunch with Lord Swinton on 30 September he favoured stepping down, but only if Viscount Hailsham could be shoehorned in as his successor. He saw Butler on the morning of 7 October and told him he planned to stay on to lead the Conservatives into the next General Election, then was struck down by prostate problems on the night of 7–8 October, on the eve of the Conservative Party conference.

Retirement, 1963–1986

Macmillan initially refused a peerage and retired from politics in September 1964, standing down at the following month's election, which the Conservatives narrowly lost to Labour, now led by Harold Wilson. His service in the House of Commons totalled 37 years.

Oxford chancellor (1960–1986)

Macmillan had been elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1960, in a campaign masterminded by Hugh Trevor-Roper, and held this office for the rest of his life, frequently presiding over college events, making speeches and tirelessly raising funds. According to Sir Patrick Neill QC, the vice-chancellor, Macmillan "would talk late into the night with eager groups of students who were often startled by the radical views he put forward, well into his last decade."

Return to Macmillan Publishers

In retirement Macmillan took up the chairmanship of his family's publishing house, Macmillan Publishers, from 1964 to 1974. The publishing firm remained in family hands until a majority share was purchased in 1995 by the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group; the imprint persists.

Macmillan brought out a six-volume autobiography:

Winds of Change, 1914–1939 (1966) ISBN 0-333-06639-1

The Blast of War, 1939–1945 (1967) ISBN 0-333-00358-6

Tides of Fortune, 1945–1955 (1969) ISBN 0-333-04077-5

Riding the Storm, 1956–1959 (1971) ISBN 0-333-10310-6

Pointing the Way, 1959–1961 (1972) ISBN 0-333-12411-1

At the End of the Day, 1961–1963 (1973) ISBN 0-333-12413-8

Macmillan's biographer acknowledges that his memoirs were considered "heavy going". Reading these volumes was said by Macmillan's political enemy Enoch Powell to induce "a sensation akin to that of chewing on cardboard". Butler wrote in his review of Riding the Storm: "Altogether this massive work will keep anybody busy for several weeks."

Macmillan's wartime diaries were better received.

War Diaries: Politics and War in the Mediterranean, January 1943 – May 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1984) ISBN 0-333-37198-4

Since Macmillan's death, his diaries for the 1950s and 1960s have also been published, both edited by Peter Catterall:

The Macmillan Diaries: The Cabinet Years 1950–57 (London: Macmillan, 2003) ISBN 0-333-71167-X

London clubs

Macmillan was a member of many clubs. On his first evening as prime minister he made a public show of taking the Chief Whip Edward Heath for oysters at the Turf Club.

He became president of the Carlton Club in 1977 and would often stay at the club when he had to stay in London overnight. Within a few months of becoming president, he merged the Carlton and Junior Carlton. He was also a member of Buck's, Pratt's, the Turf Club and Beefsteak Club. He also once commented that White's was 75% gentlemen and 25% crooks, the perfect combination for a club.

Political interventions

Macmillan made occasional political interventions in retirement. Responding to a remark made by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson about not having boots in which to go to school, Macmillan retorted: 'If Mr Wilson did not have boots to go to school that is because he was too big for them.'

Macmillan accepted the Order of Merit in 1976. In October of that year he called for "a Government of National Unity" including all parties, which could command the public support to resolve the economic crisis. Asked who could lead such a coalition, he replied: "Mr Gladstone formed his last Government when he was eighty-three. I'm only eighty-two. You mustn't put temptation in my way." He discussed the idea with Eden, but the IMF loan saved the country and the Labour government.

Macmillan still travelled widely, visiting China in October 1979, where he held talks with senior Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping.

Relations with Margaret Thatcher

Macmillan found himself drawn more actively into politics after Margaret Thatcher became Conservative leader in February 1975. After she ended Labour's five-year rule and became prime minister in May 1979, he told Nigel Fisher (his biographer, and himself a Conservative MP): "Ted [Heath] was a very good No2 {pause} not a leader {pause}. Now, you have a real leader. {long pause} Whether she's leading you in the right direction ..."

The record of Macmillan's own premiership came under attack from the monetarists in the party, whose theories Thatcher supported. In a celebrated speech he wondered aloud where such theories had come from:

Was it America? Or was it Tibet? It is quite true, many of Your Lordships will remember it operating in the nursery. How do you treat a cold? One nanny said, 'Feed a cold'; she was a neo-Keynesian. The other said, 'Starve a cold'; she was a monetarist.

Macmillan was one of several people who advised Thatcher to set up a small War Cabinet to manage the Falklands War. On his advice she excluded the Treasury from this body. Having first inquired whether Argentina was known to have atomic weapons, Macmillan's advice was to appoint a senior military advisor, as Pug Ismay had been in the Second World War (in the event Admiral Lewin, Chief of Defence Staff, performed this role). She had already received advice to exclude the Treasury from Frank Cooper (the Permanent Under-Secretary for Defence), not least because of Macmillan's own behaviour, as Chancellor, in demanding a halt to the Suez operation. She later recalled: 'I never regretted following Harold Macmillan's advice. We were never tempted to compromise the security of our forces for financial reasons. Everything we did was governed by military necessity.'

With hereditary peerages again being created under Thatcher, Macmillan requested the earldom that had been customarily bestowed to departing prime ministers, and on 24 February 1984 he was created Earl of Stockton and Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden. He is the last non-royal recipient of a hereditary peerage. He took the title from his former parliamentary seat on the edge of the Durham coalfields, and in his maiden speech in the House of Lords he criticised Thatcher's handling of the coal miners' strike and her characterisation of striking miners as "the enemy within". He received an unprecedented standing ovation for his oration, which included the words:

Death and funeral

Macmillan had often play-acted being an old man long before real old age set in. As early as 1948 Humphry Berkeley wrote of how "he makes a show of being feeble and decrepit", mentioning how he had suddenly stopped shambling and sprinted for a train. Nigel Fisher tells an anecdote of how Macmillan initially greeted him to his house leaning on a stick, but later walked and climbed steps perfectly well, twice acting lame again and fetching his stick when he remembered his "act". However, in genuine old age he became almost blind, causing him to need sticks and a helping arm.

On the evening of 29 December 1986, Macmillan died at Birch Grove, the Macmillan family mansion on the edge of Ashdown Forest, in Horsted Keynes, West Sussex. His grandson and heir Alexander, said: "In the last 48 hours he was very weak but entirely reasonable and intelligent. His last words were, 'I think I will go to sleep now'." His lifespan of 92 years and 322 days was the longest of any British prime minister until surpassed by James Callaghan on 14 February 2005.

Paying tribute, Thatcher hailed Macmillan as "a very remarkable man and a very great patriot", and said that his dislike of "selling the family silver" had never come between them. He was "unique in the affection of the British people". Additional tributes came from around the world. US President Ronald Reagan said: "The American people share in the loss of a voice of wisdom and humanity who, with eloquence and gentle wit, brought to the problems of today the experience of a long life of public service." Outlawed African National Congress president Oliver Tambo sent his condolences: 'As South Africans we shall always remember him for his efforts to encourage the apartheid regime to bow to the winds of change that continue to blow in South Africa.' Commonwealth Secretary-General Sir Shridath Ramphal affirmed: "His own leadership in providing from Britain a worthy response to African national consciousness shaped the post-war era and made the modern Commonwealth possible."

A private funeral was held on 5 January 1987 at St Giles' Church, Horsted Keynes, West Sussex, where he had regularly worshipped and read the lesson. Two hundred mourners attended, including 64 members of the Macmillan family, Thatcher and former premiers Lord Home and Edward Heath, as well as Lord Hailsham, and "scores of country neighbours". The Prince of Wales sent a wreath "in admiring memory". He was buried beside his wife and next to his parents and his son Maurice, who had died in 1984.

Honours, awards and legacy

Macmillan was an elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1962.

In 1976 he received the Order of Merit. In 1984 he received the Freedom medal from the Roosevelt Study Center.

Macmillan's archives are located at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library.

Macmillan was awarded a number of honorary degrees, including:

1956 – Indiana University

1958 – DePauw University

1958 – Johns Hopkins University, together with Eisenhower

1961 – University of Cambridge

Historians' assessments of Macmillan's premiership

C. P. Snow wrote to Macmillan that his reputation would endure as, like Churchill, he was "psychologically interesting".

An early biographer George Hutchinson called him "The Last Edwardian at Number Ten" (1980), mistakenly in the view of Nigel Fisher. Fisher described him as "complex, almost chameleon". At times he portrayed himself as the descendant of a Scottish crofter, as a businessman, aristocrat, intellectual and soldier. Labour leader Harold Wilson wrote that his "role as a poseur was itself a pose". Wilson also argued that behind the public nonchalance lay a real professional. Fisher also wrote that he "had a talent for pursuing progressive policies but presenting them tactfully in a Conservative tone of voice".

Historian John Vincent explores the image Macmillan crafted of himself for his colleagues and constituents:

He presented himself as a patrician, as the last Edwardian, as a Whig (in the tradition of his wife's family), as a romantic Tory, as intellectual, as a man shaped by the comradeship of the trenches and by the slump of the 1930s, as a shrewd man of business of bourgeois Scottish stock, and as a venerable elder statesman at home with modern youth. There was something in all these views, which he did little to discourage, and which commanded public respect into the early 1960s. Whether he was ever a mainstream Conservative, rather than a skilful exponent of the postwar consensus, is more doubtful.

Alistair Horne, his official biographer, concedes that after his re-election in 1959 Macmillan's premiership suffered a series of major setbacks.

Campbell writes that: "a late developer who languished on the back benches ... in the 1930s, Macmillan seized his opportunity when it came with flair and ruthlessness, and [until about 1962] filled the highest office with compelling style". However, he argues that Macmillan is remembered as having been "a rather seedy conjuror", famous for Premium Bonds, Beeching's cuts to the railways, and the Profumo Scandal. He is also remembered for "stop-go" economics. In the 1980s the aged Macmillan was seen as "a revered but slightly pathetic figure".

Cabinets (1957–1963)

January 1957 – October 1959

Harold Macmillan: Prime Minister

Lord Kilmuir: Lord Chancellor

Lord Salisbury: Lord President of the Council

Rab Butler: Lord Privy Seal and Secretary of State for the Home Department

Peter Thorneycroft: Chancellor of the Exchequer

Selwyn Lloyd: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

Alan Lennox-Boyd: Secretary of State for the Colonies

Lord Home: Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations

Sir David Eccles: President of the Board of Trade

Charles Hill: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

Lord Hailsham: Minister of Education

John Scott Maclay: Secretary of State for Scotland

Derick Heathcoat Amory: Minister of Agriculture

Iain Macleod: Minister of Labour and National Service

Harold Arthur Watkinson: Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation

Duncan Edwin Sandys: Minister of Defence

Lord Mills: Minister of Power

Henry Brooke: Minister of Housing and Local Government and Welsh Affairs

October 1959 – July 1960

Harold Macmillan: Prime Minister

Lord Kilmuir: Lord Chancellor

Lord Home: Lord President of the Council and Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations

Lord Hailsham: Lord Privy Seal and Minister of Science

Derick Heathcoat Amory: Chancellor of the Exchequer

Rab Butler: Secretary of State for the Home Department

Selwyn Lloyd: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

Iain Macleod: Secretary of State for the Colonies

Reginald Maudling: President of the Board of Trade

Charles Hill: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

Sir David Eccles: Minister of Education

Lord Mills: Chief Secretary to the Treasury

Ernest Marples: Minister of Transport

Duncan Edwin Sandys: Minister of Aviation

Harold Arthur Watkinson: Minister of Defence

John Scott Maclay: Secretary of State for Scotland

Edward Heath: Minister of Labour and National Service

John Hare: Minister of Agriculture

July 1960 – October 1961

Harold Macmillan: Prime Minister

Lord Kilmuir: Lord Chancellor

Lord Hailsham: Lord President of the Council and Minister of Science

Edward Heath: Lord Privy Seal

Selwyn Lloyd: Chancellor of the Exchequer

Rab Butler: Secretary of State for the Home Department

Lord Home: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

Iain Macleod: Secretary of State for the Colonies

Duncan Edwin Sandys: Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations

Reginald Maudling: President of the Board of Trade

Charles Hill: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

Sir David Eccles: Minister of Education

Lord Hailsham: Minister of Science

Lord Mills: Chief Secretary to the Treasury

Ernest Marples: Minister of Transport

Peter Thorneycroft: Minister of Aviation

Harold Arthur Watkinson: Minister of Defence

John Scott Maclay: Secretary of State for Scotland

John Hare: Minister of Labour and National Service

October 1961 – July 1962

Harold Macmillan: Prime Minister

Lord Kilmuir: Lord Chancellor

Lord Hailsham: Lord President of the Council and Minister of Science

Edward Heath: Lord Privy Seal

Selwyn Lloyd: Chancellor of the Exchequer

Rab Butler: Secretary of State for the Home Department

Alec Douglas-Home: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

Reginald Maudling: Secretary of State for the Colonies

Duncan Edwin Sandys: Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations

Frederick Erroll: President of the Board of Trade

Iain Macleod: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

Sir David Eccles: Minister of Education

Henry Brooke: Chief Secretary to the Treasury

Ernest Marples: Minister of Transport

Peter Thorneycroft: Minister of Aviation

Harold Arthur Watkinson: Minister of Defence

John Scott Maclay: Secretary of State for Scotland

John Hare: Minister of Labour and National Service

July 1962 – October 1963

Note: In a radical reshuffle dubbed "The Night of the Long Knives", Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet.

Harold Macmillan: Prime Minister

Rab Butler: Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State

Lord Dilhorne: Lord Chancellor

Lord Hailsham: Lord President of the Council and Minister of Science

Edward Heath: Lord Privy Seal

Reginald Maudling: Chancellor of the Exchequer

Henry Brooke: Secretary of State for the Home Department

Alec Douglas-Home: Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

Duncan Edwin Sandys: Secretary of State for the Colonies and Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations

Frederick Erroll: President of the Board of Trade

Iain Macleod: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

Sir Edward Boyle: Minister of Education

John Boyd-Carpenter: Chief Secretary to the Treasury

Ernest Marples: Minister of Transport

Julian Amery: Minister of Aviation

Peter Thorneycroft: Minister of Defence

Memoirs

Winds of change 1914-1939

The blast of war 1939-1945

Tides of fortune 1945-1955

Riding the storm 1956-1959

Pointing the way 1959-1961

At the end of the day 1961-1963