Harold Macmillan

by Charles Williams

Harold Macmillan was the British Conservative Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963. A man of civilized, humane conceptions of the purposes of government, he was also a figure of paradox. Beneath the studied Edwardian manner was a subtle and acute intelligence. His reputation for unflappability concealed a temperament of surprising sensitivity.

The reassuring father figure who seemed a guarantee of continuity showed a willingness to change direction matched by few of his predecessors. In the 1930s he was right when his contemporaries were wrong; in the 1950s on his accession to the premiership, he was able to restore unity, morale, and self-respect to his party and his country. In the 1960s, he put Britain on a course to a new role within Europe, withdrew from Empire, and was in part responsible for the Test Ban Treaty which marked the beginnings of a detente between the West and Soviet Russia.

Personified as "Supermac" in popular cartoons, he was an early master of the soundbite, and his phrasemaking still occupies any dictionary of quotations—"a little local difficulty" (on the resignation of his entire Treasury team); "a wind of change" (decolonization of Africa); and "selling off the family silver" (his 1984 anti-Thatcherite maiden speech in the House of Lords).

Genres: Politics

416 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Please see: Charles Williams


Charles Cuthbert Powell Williams, Baron Williams of Elvel CBE was a manager and Labour peer. In his 20s he played first-class cricket while at university and for several seasons afterwards.

The son of N. P. Williams and Muriel de Lérisson Cazenove, he was educated at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in literae humaniores in 1955 and a Master of Arts. Williams was further educated at the London School of Economics, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1964. Between 1955 and 1957, he served as Subaltern in the Headquarter of the King's Royal Rifle Corps in Winchester and in the 1st Battalion in Derna in Libya.

Reviews

[David Cheshire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never really got Macmillan; 500 pages later I still don't. But this isn't Williams' fault; he skillfully combines a humane and generous account with judgements that are measured but give absolutely no quarter. Wilson said Macmillan "posed as a poseur" and this gets near the essence of the man; his layers of deception - what Williams calls "the mask". Harold married a Cavendish: big mistake. While it allowed him to become (except by birth) the perfect languid Edwardian aritocrat, it disastrously exposed him to the humiliation of Dorothy's Boothby fixation. He survived by assuming, and then, says Williams, becoming, "the mask". Politically his achievements were almost negligible. He rode the wave of the later fifties boom without really understanding it, nor why it began to fade. He kept us out of Europe but in the nuclear club. He got the Tories out of Suez (his solitary achievement?) then announced the winding down of empire. He sucked up to the Americans (JFK's "uncle Harold"), but he was no Greek to their Roman. Williams says he was "neither one thing nor the other". This is right; almost great, almost tragic, Harold never quite succeeded in being either.