The hardback edition of D.R. Thorpe’s Supermac is 626 pages in length (not including endnotes and index), 24cm x 16cm x 6cm in girth, and weighs in at more than one kilogram – on first appearances, not a book for a beach holiday. Or so I thought, because despite the corporeal hardships of reading this on a sunbed in mercury-popping heat, I was transfixed. And now I have the forearms to prove it.
Thorpe gravitates between dextrous prose and a judicial exposition of evidence, such as when taking the reader through the controversial Cossacks repatriation episode, or the quandary of royal prerogative during the handover to Lord Home. He not only sketches but paints vast masterpieces of the key stages in Macmillan’s private and public lives that we know well: the family publishing firm; his reputation as a Tory maverick and persona non grata; his very special relationships with a series of American presidents; Premium Bonds; the ‘winds of change’ as Britain’s gaze veered from colonies to the continent; Vassell, Profumo and the cusp of modernity; and the years in which Britain ‘never had it so good’.
Yet it is Thorpe’s mastery of anecdotes and aphorism – also one of Macmillan’s many talents – that kept me turning page after page. Supermac is full of quirky asides and fresh insights:
1. Bravery in war. During the Second World War, Macmillan was Churchill’s minister in the Mediterranean. In February 1943 he was in a dreadful plane crash in Algiers. The pilot, navigator and Macmillan scrambled through the emergency exit but Macmillan then re-entered to rescue the French flag lieutenant, escaping just before the plane exploded. John J. McCloy, President Roosevelt’s Assistant Secretary of War, witnessed the incident: ‘It was the most gallant thing I’ve ever seen and I’d been in the first war and seen plenty of gallantry then.’ Macmillan never mentioned it in his own diaries.
2. The YMCA and a ‘property-owning democracy’. Many people wrongly believe that the ‘property-owning democracy’ was a Thatcherite mantra and achievement. Harold Macmillan was part of a group of young progressive Tory MPs in the 1920s, which the old guard nicknamed the ‘YMCA’. One such member was Noel Skelton, then MP for Perth, who first outlined the ‘property-owning democracy’ idea in the Spectator in April and May 1923. Macmillan put the theory into practice when housing minister during the 1950s.
3. The 1930s: up a creek without a rudder. Disillusioned with economic policy and appeasement, Macmillan ostracised himself from the Conservative party during the 1930s, eventually resigning the Tory whip in 1936 for a year. He yearned for a centrist alliance, ‘a fusion of all that is best in the Left and the Right and it would have to be a Left Centre rather than a Right Centre’ – his preferred leader of this alliance was Herbert Morrison, the grandfather of Lord Mandelson. What I didn’t know was how close he was to cutting ties altogether and joining Sir Oswald Moseley’s New Party. It took Bob Boothby of all people to convince him to stay with the Tories.
4. In Her Majesty’s most civil service. Macmillan spoke in the highest terms of the Civil Service and relied hugely on a series of star permanent and deputy secretaries. Few were more appreciated than Evelyn Sharp, his deputy secretary at the Ministry of Housing. Sharp was the driving force behind Macmillan’s early ministerial success and he regarded her as ‘without exception the ablest woman I have ever known’. She became a life peer as Baroness Sharp of Hornsey in 1968.
5. The party leadership and poor ‘Wab’. The bitter rivalry between Butler and Macmillan is legendary. Their tussle to succeed Eden as Prime Minister was effectively settled, however, by one ruthless, calculating act. At a meeting of the 1922 Committee in November 1956, ostensibly about Suez, Butler spoke briefly and drably on general factual matters. He then invited Macmillan, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to say a few words about oil. Oil, indeed. Macmillan launched into a half-hour, virtuoso tour d’horizon and sat down to rapturous applause. Enoch Powell called it ‘one of the most horrible things that I remember in politics’ and thereafter always distrusted Macmillan. Yet Macmillan showed the necessary mettle and as for Butler, the French might say, ton pis.
6. The local boy’s local paper. On 10th January 1957, the Brighton Evening Argus ran with two main headlines. First, the new £7.8 million Gatwick south terminal; and second, Brighton & Hove Albion’s race for promotion from the Third Division South. Tucked away inside was a small headline: ‘Local Man becomes Prime Minister.’ There could be no more fitting greeting for the most laconic and witty of Prime Ministers.
7. Political families and family politics. These days, David Cameron is chippily criticised for being an Old Etonian. Imagine the apoplexy today’s chatterers might have suffered in the 1950s, when Macmillan famously staffed his first Government with thirty-five fellow former OEs! The favouritism did not stop at schooling. In the October 1960 reshuffle, Julian Amery, Macmillan’s son-in-law, became Minister for Air and the Duke of Devonshire, Macmillan’s nephew by marriage, was made Under-Secretary at the Commonwealth Relations Office. Lord Lansdowne (Lady Dorothy’s cousin) was already a Foreign Office minister. The Prime Minister’s son, Maurice Macmillan, MP for Halifax, moved the address for the new parliamentary session and began: ‘Speaking as the only back-bench member of my family…’
8. The Prince and the Prime Minister. Many congratulations to the Duke of Edinburgh, who celebrates his ninetieth birthday this week. If the Earl of Stockton was still with us, he might be less than flattering. He had this to say of Prince Philip on one of his Prime Ministerial visits to Balmoral: ‘I don’t altogether like the tone of his talk. It is too like that of a clever undergraduate, who has just discovered socialism.’
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