Harold Macmillan: Aspects of a Political Life

click here for more details, find new or used items	Pages: 280 (Hardcover) Editor: Sabine Lee ISBN: 0333713737 Pub: Palgrave Macmillan Pub date: 1999-06-08 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 543899

Reader Reviews:

An authoritative and scholarly assessment of a complex man (2/2 people found this helpful)

Although this is a book for the specialist it would readily become accessible to anyone who familiarised him or herself with Horne's official biography of Harold Macmillan. This book fills in welcome gap in the literature on Harold Macmillan. As well as being a superb summary of the political life of Harold Macmillan, it bridges the gap between the public perception of the amiable Etonian - 'The last Edwardian at Number Ten' - with the reality of a formidable political operator and statesman facing the threat of national decline and nuclear war with stoicism. Excluding autobiography and the official biography, if one was limited to book on Harold Macmillan this edited volume would be it. The book covers a number of aspects of Macmillan's life and attitudes which together illuminate the complex personality behind the enigma that was 'Supermac'. The contributors range from policy makers (Oliver Wright, Curtis Keeble) to the most prominent scholars of the Macmillan era (Horne, Aldous, Lamb, Lee). This creates a fascinating blend of anecdote and archival scholarship which provide a superb profile of the charismatic Prime Minister. Even when more peripheral issues are tackled (over Aldous' chapter on Macmillan's perceptions of Ireland, for instance) the narrative casts beams of lights that facilitate understanding of the central beliefs underlying 'Supermac's' world view. One quibble, perhaps, may be that the book would have benefitted from a seperate treatment of Macmillan's experiences in WW 1 - such were the effects of that conflict on his subsequent beliefs (explaining, for instance, his hard-line against the dictators in the 1930s as compared with his search for detente in the 1950s and 1960s). Regardless, this book is invaluable on how Macmillan's personal prejudices shaped British destinies in the post-war world (W. Scott Lucas on the 'Special Relationship' and Lee on Anglo-German relations) as well as showing how Macmillan's pragmatism could look like Machiavellian manoeuvering on occasion (Lamb on Macmillan and Europe; Donette Murray on Macmillan and Skybolt). It is in such areas, when combined with the percieved outmoded style of Macmillan by 1963, that the legacy of Macmillan is often portrayed: that of failure. This 'ultimate tragedy', the complexity of the man (having read his diaries at the Bodleain I can testify to the inner torments of the man) combined with his larger-than-life style contiue to exert a fascination that we feel is all too absent in our contemporary politicians. A rare achievement - this is one of the few books that does credit to the man as historical subject matter.

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