Harold Macmillan

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Harold Macmillan was Conservative Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963. A man of civilized, humane conceptions of the purposes of government, he was also a figure of paradox.

Beneath the studied Edwardian manner which he cultivated was a subtle and acute intelligence. His reputation for unflappability which he was careful to foster, concealed a temperament of surprising sensitivity. The man who to many seemed to conduct a deliberately materialistic election campaign in 1959 was an intellectual, arguably the first since Balfour to have led the Conservative Party. The reassuring father figure who in his person seemed a guarantee of continuity showed a willingness to change direction matched by few of his predecessors.

In the 1930s he was right when the bulk of his contemporaries were wrong; in the 1950s on his accession to the premiership, he was able to restore unity, morale and self-respect, not only to his party, but to the country. In the 1960s, besides putting Britain on a course to a new role within Europe, he withdrew from Empire and was in part responsible for the Test Ban Treaty which marked the beginnings of a detente between the West and Soviet Russia.

Personified as 'Supermac' in Vicky's famous cartoons, he was an early master of the soundbite, and his phrasemaking still occupies any dictionary of quotations; 'a little local difficulty' (on the resignation of his entire Treasurey team); 'a wind of change' (decolonialisation of Africa); 'selling off the family silver (his anti-Thatcherite maiden speech in the House of Lords in 1984). Charles Williams explores the answers to the many unanswered questions about one of the great political chameleons of the 20th century.