Harold Macmillan

by Charles Williams

Born under Queen Victoria, wounded in the Great War and the last Prime Minister to wear a moustache, Harold Macmillan often seemed distant and outmoded. Yet he repeatedly overcame adversity, drawing strength from his wife's infamous infidelity to gain political prominence in the Second World War and its aftermath. A shy cuckold became 'the great actor-manager' of British politics.

In a premiership bracketed by scandals he memorably, and justifiably, proclaimed that most of the British people had 'never had it so good'.

Charles Williams' new biography brings a lively style to an acute and scholarly reappraisal of Macmillan's life. Above all, he argues that the personal anguish over his wife's infidelity was the making of Macmillan as a politician. With an eye to both public and private affairs, Williams pulls no punches in his judgements of Macmillian's political machinations along with his undoubted achievements.

This is a detailed and thought-provoking assessment of Macmillan's life and legacy.

Genres: Politics

560 pages, Hardcover

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.