Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan - Softcover

Thorpe, D.R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844135411 ISBN 13: 9781844135417

Publisher: Pimlico, 2011

Synopsis

Packed with new revelations about Macmillan's private life as well as key events including the Tolstoy controversy, the Suez Crisis, the "You've Never Had It So Good" speech, the "Winds of Change" speech, and the Profumo scandal


 

The culmination of 35 years of research by a respected historian, this magisterial biography provides an unforgettable portrait of a turbulent age. Great-grandson of a crofter and son-in-law of a duke, Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) was complex as a person and influential as a politician. Marked by terrible experiences in the trenches in World War I and by his work as an MP during the Depression, he was a Tory rebel—an outspoken backbencher, opposing the economic policies of the 1930s and the appeasement policies of his own government. Churchill gave him responsibility during World War II with executive command as "Viceroy of the Mediterrranean." After the war, in opposition, Macmillan overhauled the Conservatives on progressive and radical lines; after 1951, in government, he served as Minister of Housing, Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, and Chancellor of the Exchequer. He became Prime Minister after the Suez Crisis, and between 1957 and 1963 presided over Great Britain's transition from the age of austerity to that of affluence. He also proved himself one of the great publishers of his generation.

About this title

About the Author

D. R. Thorpe's work on the constitutional history and politics of the 20th century has made him one of Britain's most respected historians. He has written biographies of Alec Douglas-Home, Anthony Eden, Selwyn Lloyd, Austen Chamberlain, Lord Curzon, and Lord Butler.

Reviews

This portrait of Britain’s prime minister from 1957 to 1963 has larger themes, like the empire’s end, as a backdrop to its main theme, Macmillan’s climb to the top of Disraeli’s proverbial “greasy pole.” Thorpe, also a biographer of several of Macmillan’s Tory rivals, delves deeply into parliamentary detail and cabinet reshuffles over the course of Macmillan’s long House of Commons career. A wounded survivor of WWI, Macmillan faced a bleak future, personally and politically, in 1929, when he was cuckolded by his aristocratic wife and rejected by his working-class constituency. Describing Macmillan’s resignation to the affair and regaining of his seat, Thorpe follows him through various posts to which Churchill appointed him during WWII to the early 1950s, arriving, halfway through the book, at Macmillan’s royal summons to supreme political office in 1957. The ensuing prime ministerial events, peaking in Macmillan’s election in his own right in 1959, include annual budgets, international crises, and the jockeying, precipitated by the Profumo scandal of 1963, to succeed Macmillan. Wherever Whitehall whispers find eavesdroppers, Thorpe’s meticulous details will find readers. --Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Pimlico
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1844135411
• ISBN 13: 9781844135417
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 886