[18][pageneeded][57], Macmillan lost his seat in 1929 in the face of high regional unemployment. [50] Eileen O'Casey, ne Reynolds (19001995), the actress wife of Irish dramatist Sen O'Casey, was another female friend, Macmillan publishing her husband's plays. Harold Macmillan was, of course, not solely or even pre-eminently responsible for that. [10], Macmillan received an intensive early education, closely guided by his American mother. His precise quote, at a dinner of the Tory Reform Group at the Royal Overseas League on 8 November 1985, was on the subject of the sale of assets commonplace among individuals or states when they encountered financial difficulties: 'First of all the Georgian silver goes. Thorpe argues that despite his 1960 "Winds of Change" speech, he was largely pushed into rapid independence for African countries by Maudling and Macleod. 1, and nuclear contaminants travelled up a chimney where the filters blocked some, but not all, of the contaminated material. [196], Macmillan was a supporter of the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963, and in the first half of 1963 he had Ormsby-Gore quietly apply pressure on Kennedy to resume the talks in the spring of 1963 when negotiations became stalled. On 3 February 1960, Harold Macmillan famously gave a speech to South Africa's parliament during a 6-week tour of 'British Africa'. It happened within living memory. [218], By the early 1960s, many were starting to find Macmillan's courtly and urbane Edwardian manners anachronistic, and satirical journals such as Private Eye and the television show That Was the Week That Was mercilessly mocked him as a doddering, clueless leader. Sarah Heath (19301970). [247] After she ended Labour's five-year rule and became Prime Minister in May 1979,[248] he told Nigel Fisher (his biographer, and himself a Conservative MP): "Ted [Heath] was a very good No2 {pause} not a leader {pause}. Eden sent out Robert Dixon to abolish the job of Resident Minister, there being then no job for Macmillan back in the UK, but he managed to prevent his job being abolished. In 1984 he received the Freedom medal from the Roosevelt Study Center. He talked the matter over with his son Maurice and other senior ministers. This was compounded by a financial scandal in 1941, when he was censured for not disclosing a personal interest. In "Economic Aspects of Defence", early in 1939, he called for a Ministry of Supply. Wife of Julian Tufnell Faber. Passion can be a higher form of sensibility, and it was admired as such, but it can only flourish amid tension and obstacles. He finally resigned, receiving the Queen from his hospital bed, on 18 October 1963, after nearly seven years as prime minister. 107108 This period saw disturbances amongst British troops in France, which was of grave worry to the Government as the Russian and German revolutions had been accompanied by army mutinies. [209] In his diary, Macmillan called Sukarno "a cross between Liberace and Little Lord Fauntleroy". Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. He bore no grudge against Thorneycroft and brought him and Powell, of whom he was more wary, back into the government in 1960. [143] It was intended as mockery but backfired, coming to be used in a neutral or friendly fashion. Everybody's entitled to that.'. Once, when I got engaged to an American heiress, she pursued me from Chatsworth to Paris and from Paris to Lisbon. Baldwin later mentioned that he had survived by steering a middle course between Harold Macmillan and John Gretton, an extreme right-winger. Harold Macmillan; Date of birth: 10 February 1894 Chelsea: Date of death: 29 December 1986 Sussex: Place of burial: Sussex; Country of citizenship: United Kingdom; Educated at: . In March 1932 he published "The State and Industry" (not to be confused with his earlier pamphlet "Industry and the State"). "The essence of his persona was as elusive as mercury." They wouldn't have dreamt of ringing up a paper: they'd have been absolutely horrified.'. Mr Harold MacMillan, the former Prime Minister, left the King Edward V11 Hospital in London after undergoing an operation. 'I can only suppose, without knowing anything about that particular relationship, that these considerations obtained, and I think it's more decent and more civilised. [250]:148 Having first inquired whether Argentina was known to have atomic weapons, Macmillan's advice was to appoint a senior military advisor, as Pug Ismay had been in the Second World War (in the event Admiral Lewin, Chief of Defence Staff, performed this role). [140] He was also devoted to family members: when Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire was later appointed (Minister for Colonial Affairs from 1963 to 1964 among other positions) he described his uncle's behaviour as "the greatest act of nepotism ever". Note: In a radical reshuffle dubbed "The Night of the Long Knives", Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet and instituted many other changes. [94], With the Conservative victory in 1951 Macmillan became Minister of Housing & Local Government under Churchill, who entrusted him with fulfilling the pledge to build 300,000 houses per year (up from the previous target of 200,000 a year), made in response to a speech from the floor at the 1950 Party Conference. You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans-great big, vulgar bustling people, more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues, but also more corrupt. His book The Middle Way appeared in June 1938, advocating a broadly centrist political philosophy both domestically and internationally. [201] Through the Central African Federation had been presented as a multi-racial attempt to develop the region, the federation had been unstable right from the start with the black population charging that the whites had been given a privileged position.[201]. [9] He was often treated with condescension by his aristocratic in-laws and was observed to be a sad and isolated figure at Chatsworth in the 1930s. Macmillan once noted that Elizabeth "means to be a queen and not a puppet," and that she had the "heart and stomach of a man." Within the fabric of the Commonwealth lies the future of the Colonial territories. Although it is sometimes stated that he believed himself to have inoperable prostate cancer, he in fact knew it was benign before the operation. Within months they were engaged. He almost became Conservative candidate for the safe seat of Hitchin in 1931. She met Macmillan in 1919, when he was aide-de- camp to her father, then Governor- General of Canada. [9] Macmillan considered himself a Scot. Reconfiguring the nation's defences to meet the realities of the nuclear age, he ended National Service, strengthened the nuclear forces by acquiring Polaris, and pioneered the Nuclear Test Ban with the United States and the Soviet Union. [11], spouse of the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Maurice Macmillan, Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lady_Dorothy_Macmillan&oldid=1082950698. Then there is the growing division of comparative prosperity in the south and an ailing north and Midlands. [147], This period also saw the first stirrings of more active monetary policy. Macmillan initially was concerned that the Irish-American Catholic Kennedy might be an Anglophobe, which led Macmillan, who knew of Kennedy's special interest in the Third World, to suggest that Britain and the United States spend more money on aid to the Third World. He was a One Nation Tory of the Disraelian tradition and supported the post-war consensus. The sheer devilry of it verged upon the disgusting." [276] Fisher described him as "complex, almost chameleon". The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water until he had learnt to swim. But it just didn't get into the papers. [201] Many in the British media compared the living conditions in the Kenyan camps to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, saying that the people in the camps were emaciated and sickly. The Boothby/Lady Dorothy affair was a magnificent passion based on obstacles: and if they weren't there, she created them. [196] For his part, Kennedy pressed Macmillan unsuccessfully to have Britain join the American economic embargo against Cuba. It is quite true, many of Your Lordships will remember it operating in the nursery. [231], While recovering in hospital, Macmillan wrote a memorandum (dated 14 October) recommending the process by which "soundings" would be taken of party opinion to select his successor, which was accepted by the Cabinet on 15 October. On 10 November 1944 he was appointed Acting President of the Allied Commission (the Supreme Commander being President).[85]. He behaved immaculately throughout her long affair, giving his name to Sarah, her daughter born in 1930, fathered by Boothby. Barely 30 years later, everything is different - people's private attitudes to morality, and the public treatment of lapses. By the time he left office, largely unlamented at the time, he was associated not with prosperity but with "anachronism and decay". 'He was a vain man, and the fact that she loved him so extravagantly was a boost to him. [153][pageneeded]. [143] Selwyn Lloyd described Macmillan as treating most of his ministers like "junior officers in a unit he commanded". In April 1957, Macmillan reaffirmed his strong support for the British nuclear weapons programme. [263] The Prince of Wales sent a wreath "in admiring memory". Her great-uncle was Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire, who was leader of the Liberal Party in the 1870s, and a close colleague of William Ewart Gladstone, Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Salisbury. [188] Macmillan was especially opposed to intervention in Laos as he had been warned by his Chiefs of Staff on 4 January 1961 that if Western troops entered Laos, then China would probably intervene in Laos as Mao Zedong had made it quite clear he would not accept Western forces in any nation that bordered China. I really haven't a clue how to set about the job". Brendan Bracken advised him not to quit. Richard Davenport-Hines, biographer of the Macmillans, says: 'Like many other men whose lives have got too closely entangled with their mothers', Harold was frustrated: where he loved he could not sexually desire, and where he desired he could not love.' He had been a very promising young man in the Tory party, but he always had his flaws. ", Torreggiani, Valerio. [229] Macmillan was almost ready to leave hospital within ten days of the diagnosis and could easily have carried on, in the opinion of his doctor Sir John Richardson. The whole Arab world will despise us Nuri [es-Said, British-backed Prime Minister of Iraq] and our friends will fall. The collapse in the Liberal vote let him win in 1924. In one respect, things today are better then they were. She was apparently willing. It was the trouble over the cheque bonds in 1941 that probably sank him. [265] Macmillan's estate was assessed for probate on 1 June 1987, with a value of 51,114 (equivalent to 152,955 in 2021[266]). John Hunt. US President Ronald Reagan said: "The American people share in the loss of a voice of wisdom and humanity who, with eloquence and gentle wit, brought to the problems of today the experience of a long life of public service. Macmillan brought out a six-volume autobiography: Macmillan's biographer acknowledges that his memoirs were considered "heavy going". . Macmillan liked to speak French, a language in which he was far from being a master, and the result may have been that he interpreted De Gaulle as saying "no" to British membership when in fact. [19][20] He obtained a First in Honours Moderations, informally known as Mods (consisting of Latin and Greek, the first half of the four-year Oxford Literae Humaniores course, informally known as Classics), in 1914. [134] Macmillan argued at Cabinet on 4 January that Suez should be regarded as a "strategic retreat" like Mons or Dunkirk. We used to have battles and rows but they were quarrels. Despite this, three children were born to them in the first five years. [39] He relinquished his commission on 1 April 1920. Harold Macmillan, who was prime minister from 1957 to 1963, believed in fidelity, loved his wife, and was heartbroken when she died. According to Michael Bloch, there have long been rumours that Macmillan was expelled from Eton for homosexuality. Immediate Family: Daughter of Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC and Dorothy Evelyn Macmillan. [67], Macmillan at last attained office by serving in the wartime coalition government as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply from 1940. This, three children were born to them in the south and ailing! He finally resigned, receiving the Queen from his hospital bed, harold macmillan sarah heath October... It verged upon the disgusting. of more active monetary policy the face high... Of more active monetary policy it just did n't get into the papers was magnificent... 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