Product Description

Harold Macmillan was a figure of paradox. Outwardly, it was Edwardian elegance and civilised urbanity. Inwardly, it was emotional damage from his wife's open adultery and his progressive perplexity at the onward march of time. The First World War showed the courageous soldier. From then on, it was politics, rather than the family business of publishing, which was to be his future. Nevertheless, although he supported Churchill in the 1930s he was deemed boring - and certainly not ministerial material. All changed with the Second World War. Appointed Minister in Residence in North Africa, Macmillan's career flowered. After the War he became indispensable to Conservative Cabinets and as Churchill's Minister of Housing in the early 1950s he achieved the target, against all expectations, of 300,000 houses annually. Thereafter, he was Eden's Foreign Secretary and Chancellor but by then Macmillan had become openly ambitious. Over the Suez affair in 1956 he played a difficult - and somewhat devious - hand. Eden's resignation left him as the clear choice of his Cabinet colleagues to become Prime Minister. From 1957 to 1962, Macmillan was a good - some would say a great - Prime Minister. By 1962, however, his government was looking tired. The Profumo affair in 1963 was particularly damaging, and in the autumn of 1963 his health forced him to retire. Charles Williams addresses - among many other hitherto unanswered questions - whether it was Harold Macmillan's personal life that prevented him from achieving true greatness or whether he became simply out of date.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57327 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 560 pages

Review
'Charles Williams's thoughtful and well-informed new life... comes as a welcome treat... he captures better than any other writer the tensions between the different facets of Macmillan's personality' (SUNDAY TIMES )

'Charles Williams' biography is an antidote to nostalgia... a lean compelling narrative with a more detached and critical point of view.' (LITERARY REVIEW )

'a bright, swift-moving biography, without party-political rancour ' (DAILY EXPRESS )

'[Williams] has produced a biography that... is a model of its kind - diligently researched, gracefully written and never short of absorbing.' (Anthony Howard DAILY TELEGRAPH )

'a keen eye for personality and drama... this fluid and engaging new biography... give[s] readers a ringside view of the politican in the making.' (Frank Trentmann SUNDAY EXPRESS )

'a fine achievement, fair in tone and spare in style. This thoroughly absorbing book chronicles the tragic Odyssey of an almost great man.' (Kenneth Morgan THE INDEPENDENT )

'It is not only well researched and beautifully crafted but also enlivened by the insights of an experienced politician.' (Lord Radice HOUSE MAGAZINE )

'This new biography... brings the Macmillan era back to life in vivid style. It is a first-class biography... most fascinating of all is the way he describes in great detail, pathos and sympathy the extraordinary emotional tragedy that haunted much of Macmillan's political career' (Geoffrey Goodman TRIBUNE )

'It is the great contribution of this new biography by a Labour peer to show the role domestic tragedy played in Macmillan's political achievement.' (CHURCH OF ENGLAND NEWSPAPER )

'In this impressive new biography Charles Williams takes the lid off the figure of Macmillan... This illuminating biography answers many hitherto unanswered questions.' (CATHOLIC HERALD )

About the Author
Charles Williams (Lord Williams of Elvel) is a former Deputy Leader of the House of Lords and a spokesman on financial affairs. He is the highly acclaimed biographer of de Gaulle, Adenauer, Petain and Don Bradman.

Customer Reviews

An Interesting Biography of the last of the Old Tory Prime Ministers
Harold Macmillan by Charles Williams is a very good book dealing with a good but not great Prime Minister. It is well-written, interesting and opinionated but also tells the fascinating story of a very complicated character who: gave the appearance of unflapibility while being a nervous hypocondriac, who was regarded in the 1930s as a boring eccentric but became Prime Minister and won an election at least in part due to his public persona, who affected ancient mannerisms but was the first Prime Minister of the 1960s and who affected at times a pose of being unambitious but was instead extremely determined. All in all a very good book about a complicated character who rose to become a good and for a time potetially great Prime Minister and whose resignation in 1963 marked in many ways the end of an era.

Charles Williams Harold Macmillan
One of the best political biographies I have read.
Lucidly written with an abundance of shrewed,penetrating judgments on
people involved and occuring private and political situations.
Simply put,a treat to read, from cover to cover.

A mixed bag
This biography has its strong points, but I'm not sure they make up for the weaknesses. It is good on Macmillan's family life and the key personal relationships, such as with successive US presidents and de Gaulle. And, best of all, you do really get a feeling that you understand the man.

On the other hand, the balance of the book is odd, for example with only about twice as many pages on the premiership as on his time during the war in North Africa. This means that the lesser areas, such as his early years, that wartime experience, and his years after leaving office, have the space devoted to them to make for an interesting read. The premiership, on the other hand, is handled weakly, with insufficient analysis and reads too much as a simple chronology or globetrotting, golfing holidays and Trollope. Compare this part of the book with, for example, Peter Hennessey's analysis of the distinct phases of the Macmillan premiership: Williams simply doesn't convey any of that depth or understanding. There are too many gaps; the passages on cabinet selection are interesting but there is literally no mention of how either Thorneycroft or Maudling were chosen as Chancellor, which is a pity given the importance of both relationships. The epilogue, which is welcomingly analytical, just can't be supported by the preceeding chapters (and the throw away line that Mrs Thatcher was a Whig is just bizarre).

Where the book really went curiously off the rails is on the chapter on Suez (so at least in good company there I suppose). There is an interesting suggestion that sterling was not in the dire peril that Macmillan at the time suggested, though it is not clear why if he did not want his fingerprints on the dagger he was so keen to have the view propogated that he did make these warnings. An argument is put together about what happened to sterling that is then simply contradicted in a few very odd pages. One example of detail: on p265 is the statement that drawings from the IMF would be granted as of right. But on p268 is the statement that Macmillan could not after all draw down on the IMF facilities. The same chapter suggests that only one cabinet minister supported a Butler succession in 1957; the generally held view is that it was three and it really is not good enough to make a contrary assertion unsupported by argument or analysis. And, carelessly, at the foot of page 273, 'December' should clearly be 'January'. In all, that is the least satisfactory or coherent single chapter I have ever read in a political biography. And I would also draw unfavourable comparison with Edmund Dell's analysis of Macmillan's period at the Exchequer, notably the appalling lack of contingency planning for Suez.

So an interesting read, but it needs to be supported by wider reading to gain a complete appreciation of the man or his times.