Harold Macmillan - Rilegato

Williams, Lord Charles

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0297851942 ISBN 13: 9780297851943

Casa editrice: W&N, 2009

Riassunto

Harold Macmillan was a figure of paradox. Outwardly, it was Edwardian elegance and civilised urbanity. Inwardly, it was emotional damage from his wife's open adultery and his progressive perplexity at the onward march of time.

The First World War showed the courageous soldier. From then on, it was politics, rather than the family business of publishing, which was to be his future. Nevertheless, although he supported Churchill in the 1930s he was deemed boring - and certainly not ministerial material.

All changed with the Second World War. Appointed Minister in Residence in North Africa, Macmillan's career flowered. After the War he became indispensable to Conservative Cabinets and as Churchill's Minister of Housing in the early 1950s he achieved the target, against all expectations, of 300,000 houses annually. Thereafter, he was Eden's Foreign Secretary and Chancellor but by then Macmillan had become openly ambitious. Over the Suez affair in 1956 he played a difficult - and somewhat devious - hand. Eden's resignation left him as the clear choice of his Cabinet colleagues to become Prime Minister.

From 1957 to 1962, Macmillan was a good - some would say a great - Prime Minister. By 1962, however, his government was looking tired. The Profumo affair in 1963 was particularly damaging, and in the autumn of 1963 his health forced him to retire.

Charles Williams addresses - among many other hitherto unanswered questions - whether it was Harold Macmillan's personal life that prevented him from achieving true greatness or whether he became simply out of date.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

Charles Williams's thoughtful and well-informed new life... comes as a welcome treat... he captures better than any other writer the tensions between the different facets of Macmillan's personality (SUNDAY TIMES)

Charles Williams' biography is an antidote to nostalgia... a lean compelling narrative with a more detached and critical point of view. (LITERARY REVIEW)

a bright, swift-moving biography, without party-political rancour (DAILY EXPRESS)

[Williams] has produced a biography that... is a model of its kind - diligently researched, gracefully written and never short of absorbing. (Anthony Howard DAILY TELEGRAPH)

a keen eye for personality and drama... this fluid and engaging new biography... give[s] readers a ringside view of the politican in the making. (Frank Trentmann SUNDAY EXPRESS)

a fine achievement, fair in tone and spare in style. This thoroughly absorbing book chronicles the tragic Odyssey of an almost great man. (Kenneth Morgan THE INDEPENDENT)

It is not only well researched and beautifully crafted but also enlivened by the insights of an experienced politician. (Lord Radice HOUSE MAGAZINE)

This new biography... brings the Macmillan era back to life in vivid style. It is a first-class biography... most fascinating of all is the way he describes in great detail, pathos and sympathy the extraordinary emotional tragedy that haunted much of Macmillan's political career (Geoffrey Goodman TRIBUNE)

It is the great contribution of this new biography by a Labour peer to show the role domestic tragedy played in Macmillan's political achievement. (CHURCH OF ENGLAND NEWSPAPER)

In this impressive new biography Charles Williams takes the lid off the figure of Macmillan... This illuminating biography answers many hitherto unanswered questions. (CATHOLIC HERALD)

Descrizione del libro:

A masterly biography of a great Conservative Prime Minister (and publisher) - Harold Macmillan (1894-1986).

Su questa edizione

• Editore: W&N
• Data di pubblicazione: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0297851942
• ISBN 13: 9780297851943
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 560