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Jump to navigationJump to searchSupermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan by D R Thorpe (view source)
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{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan
|author=D R Thorpe
|reviewer=John Van der Kiste
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=912
|publisher=Pimlico
|date=September 2011
|isbn=978-1844135417
|website=|videocover=1844135411|amazonukaznuk=<amazonuk>1844135411</amazonuk>|amazonusaznus=<amazonus>1844135411</amazonus>
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His wit and unflappability come across in several illuminating little anecdotes. When interrupted in a speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations by the Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev petulantly banging his shoe on the table and shouting out, he paused before saying quietly, ''Well, I'd like it translated, if you would.'' Some years later he invited Margaret Thatcher, then a newly-elected leader of the party, to a family lunch when she talked endlessly and hardly paused for breath. As her car drove away, he wryly asked one of his grandsons,''Do you ever get the feeling that you have just failed geography?''
Thorpe praises Macmillan's achievements, but does not gloss over the more questionable episodes. His role in the Suez affair, which culminated in the seriously ill Anthony Eden resigning as Prime Minister and resulting in his being elevated to high office, is somewhat murky, and his conduct during the repatriation of the Cossacks at the end of the Second World War, something which returned to haunt him for the rest of his days, even more so. His Labour opponent Aneurin Bevan, not known for charitable comment, thought he was a poseur and concluded that '''behind that Edwardian countenance there is nothing'''. Yet fortunate is the senior politician who never makes a mistake, or any enemies, throughout his or her career. He could be ruthless at times, and his merciless sacking of ministers during the declining years of his premiership, especially 'the night of the long knives' in 1962, showed he was beginning to lose his touch. But he was a shrewd political operator who was fortunate to preside over the country during the transition from austerity to affluence. The 100-seat majority his party attained during the 1959 election, the only one he fought as party leader, could not be put down merely to good luck and the fact that, in the words of Labour member Richard Crossman, Tory voters were far more afraid of another Labour government than Labour voters were of another Tory government.
Home and foreign affairs during Macmillan's premiership – the Cuban missile crisis, the Profumo affair, the relationship with America and the assassination of Kennedy, and even the rise of the Beatles – are all dealt with smoothly and seamlessly as part of the story. A poignant postscript to his premiership, during which he lost not only many a friend but also his wife and only son, is sensitively recorded, and his by no means uncritical view of the Thatcher years – of which he lived to see the majority before his death in 1986 at 92 – is also told shrewdly. There is also a useful analysis of the six volumes of autobiography which he produced during his retirement years.
Our thanks to Pimlico for sending Bookbag a review copy.
If you enjoyed this, may we also recommend [[Having it so goodIt So Good: Britain in the Fifties by Peter Hennessy]], a book about the age over which Macmillan presided; and [[Pistols at Dawn: Two hundred years Hundred Years of political rivalry Political Rivalry from Pitt and Fox to Blair and Brown by John Campbell]], which includes a chapter on Macmillan and Butler, the man he defeated in the race to No 10. He came rather earlier, but you might also appreciate [[Macaulay: Britain's Liberal Imperialist by Zareer Masani]].
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[[Category:History]]
