The Guardsmen: Harold Macmillan, Three Friends and the World They Made

This is a collective biography of Harold Macmillan, Bobbety Cranborne (later Lord Salisbury), Harry Crookshank, and Oliver Lyttelton, who all joined Eton in 1906, served in the Grenadier Guards in the First World War, sat as Conservative MPs, and were all members of Churchill's war cabinet.

It follows them as they collude, strategise, manoeuvre, shirk, govern and fall out, and the overall effect is a fine tapestry of political intrigue. Covering British politics from the late twenties to the early sixties, the book is a good snapshot of British politics over a period of great change, a readable biography of one of our more enigmatic Prime Ministers, and a useful primer on British foreign affairs.

Ball has a good story to tell and he tells it well, his writing coming especially alive when dealing with the strategising and politicking which he clearly relishes. When he's not adopting a tone of wide-eyed reverence (honourable war service, the deft crushing of a political colleague, or the successful execution of any good backroom plot), he adopts one of acrid disgust (incompetent officers, Neville Chamberlain, Labour).

The two main problems with this book stem from its author's values. Firstly, Ball is so preoccupied with what he calls "the
manoeuvre and compromise of professional politicians" that we learn virtually nothing of their personal lives, and the personalities and personas of the men themselves come through only from what they do in their professional lives. As they spend the start of the book in school and the army, that does not tell us much. We spend much of the start of the book reading about their family histories, as Ball eschews describing the men with whom we will be spending the next four hundred pages in favour of describing their families' places in British society. Thereafter, we hear about their personalities only in moments of failure, triumph, or bilious rage. The latter can be fun, but one expects to finish a book of this length knowing as much about what its subjects were like as about their careers.

Ball also shirks on the issues. Issues come in and out of view as and when they are used and discarded by the four for their own political advancement. This is deliberate; it reflects how Ball believes politics works. He writes "politics for them was a constant war of manoeuvre and attrition. In their age, as in every other, this struggle was projected in idealistic rhetoric, aimed at securing and buttressing power." Any political author holding this contempt for mere 'issues' inevitably risks writing history that fails to fully illuminate changing political agendas. Ball refers to changed times, but not much to how or why.

That he seems to agree with his protagonists that "the great issue with which politicians had to deal was foreign affairs" also goes some way towards explaining his relative reticence on the reforms of the period which made a difference to the lives of ordinary Britons. I realise that it is not the intended subject of the book, but the way in which the idea of politicians as noble adventuring statesmen is treated so centrally - and that of politicians as public servants working to improve the electorate's living standards so incidentally - paints a badly incomplete picture of the postwar period, and Macmillan's legacy to it. Ball seems to agree with his subjects that if ministries like housing, health or education offer no opportunity for the appearance of heroism or adventure, they can't really be worth doing. All this leaves a slightly sour taste in the mouth.

In sum, a fine piece of historical prose marred by slightly distasteful authorial values, but I wouldn't advise anyone interested in the period or Macmillan to let that deter them from what is undoubtedly a cracking good read.

On the playing fields of Eton (5/6 people found this helpful)

The Duke of Wellington is reputed to have said that the "Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." Simon Ball's deftly written comparative biography, "The Guardsmen, Harold Macmillan, Three Friends, and the World They Made", examines the lives of four men who may be thought of as being among the last generation for which Wellington's adage has more than folkloric meaning.

The four Guardsmen were: Harold Macmillan, Oliver Lyttelton, Bobbety Cranborne and Harry Crookshank. Cranborne (the future Lord Salisbury) and Lyttelton were members of the aristocracy. Macmillan and Crookshank were from newer wealth, known then as "new men". The four entered Eton together in 1906. They all joined the Grenadier Guards in 1914 and saw service during the First World War. Conservatives all, they each entered politics in the 1920s. They all held Cabinet under Winston Churchill during the Second World War. One of the group, Harold Macmillan served as Prime Minister from 1957 until his resignation in 1963.

As the title suggests, the story really begins not on Eton's playing fields but on the killing fields of World War I France. Lyttleton, Macmillan and Crookshank fought with valor and distinction. On the same day, September 15, 1916, fighting with a mile of each other in the trenches, Macmillan and Crookshank were horribly wounded and Lyttleton was awarded a DSO (a medal for valiant service) for his heroic acts. Macmillan and Crookshank's injuries were catastrophic. Macmillan right arm and left leg never worked properly again. Crookshank was castrated by shrapnel. Cranborne served only briefly at the front.

Following the War the Guardsmen made their way into Parliament. Ball's exploration of the parallel lives of the Guardsman enables the reader to get a bird's eye view of British political life from the 1920s through the 1960s. Ball's treatment of the saga of these men is intriguing in many respects. Ball's examination of the parliamentary experiences of these four men in the 1930s, for example, provides a unique perspective on British political life in the years leading up to the Second World War. It is easy to forget that during the premiership of Neville Chamberlain that it was not Winston Churchill who stood out as a threat to Chamberlain's appeasement policies but Anthony Eden. Churchill was thought of by all as a has been. The Guardsmen were considered "Edenites. Eden, for all his intelligence, comes across as a timid and vacillating political rival notoriously incapable of making tough political decisions. Referred to by his foes and friends as Hamlet he reminded me more of Leon Trotsky in that both managed to fall ill or absent themselves from the center of action at critical moments in time and were made to look like political amateurs by men who, though perhaps less talented, had no compunction about grasping for power.

The Guardsmen, all on the anti-appeasement side of the aisle, found roles in Winston Churchill's war-time cabinet and the book takes us through their (second) war years. The Conservative Party's return to power in 1951 saw the Guardsmen reach the peak of their achievements. The story here centers around Macmillan, who served as Minister of Housing under Churchill and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Eden until becoming Prime Minister in 1957 after Eden's Suez Canal fiasco. Macmillan fought his fellow Conservatives and insisted on an economic policy that promoted employment rather than monetarist policies likely to create higher unemployment rates. Macmillan's tenure was also marked by the commencement of independence for former British colonies in Africa. He angered white settlers in Rhodesia and South Africa and their English allies (including a profoundly bitter Cranborne) by noting with no small degree of accuracy that " The Africans are not the problem in Africa, it is the Europeans who are the problem." This was followed in short order by his famous "Winds of Change" speech in which he noted that: "The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact."

As he notes in his conclusion, by the end of their lives the notion of public service (at least by the upper classes) was quaint at best and worthy of scorn at worst. These men are thought of, to the extent they are thought of at all, as antiques from an age long gone by. However, even while showing us their many flaws, Ball makes it clear that there was a certain sense of honor and integrity about these men. (This is particularly true of Macmillan.) It was once said sarcastically of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that she was not noblesse and was disinclined to oblige. Ball takes us back to a time and place where the concept of noblesse oblige still had some residual meaning.

In the hands of a lesser writer "The Guardsman" might have come across as merely a wistful yearning for "the good old days" of Conservative Party aristocratic rule. Instead, "The Guardsmen" paints a literate and informative portrait of the lives of these men and the impact the searing experiences of the First World War had on their public lives.

"The Guardsmen" left this reader wondering why and when we stopped expecting our leaders to possess core values of honor and integrity and as such it has value far greater than a mere look back in time.

The Guardsmen: Harold Macmillan, Three Friends and the World They Made

Simon Ball

Reader Reviews:

Studiedly out of touch, but a cracking read for those interested in British politics nonetheless (11/11 people found this helpful)

On the playing fields of Eton (5/6 people found this helpful)

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