The Macmillan Diaries: Cabinet Years 1950-1957

by PeterCatterall (Editor), HaroldMacmillan (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $5.87

  From August 1950 until 1966 Harold Macmillan kept one of the fullest and most entertaining political diaries of the twentieth century. This first volume starts in the last full year of the post war Labour government, follows his rise through the Churchill and Eden governments via a succession of high offices, and culminates with his becoming Prime Minister in 1957. He was an acute observer of events and people not just in his own country or party, but on the wider international and political scene. His Diary provides wry portraits of many of the leading political figures of the period and records his personal take on the great issues and events of the day. In the process Macmillan's wider activities and inner concerns are also revealed, casting light beyond the famously `unflappable' exterior onto the character of one of the most enigmatic figures in modern British political history.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $4.19

  This first volume (of two) covers the Conservatives' return to office in 1951 and the personalities and politics of Churchill's and Eden's governments, culminating in Macmillan's accession to the premiership in 1957. It records not only Macmillan's political preoccupations, such as the process of European integration, Anglo-American relations, conflict in the Middle East or the problems of the Cold War, but also provides wry pen portraits of many of the leading European and American figures of the period.

  Macmillan was an acute observer of events and people not just in his own country or party, but on the wider international and political scene. He describes with ironic amusement the diplomatic confrontations with the Russians, casts a connoisseur's eye over great parliamentary occasions and comments acerbically on the infighting of the Labour Opposition. In the process the diary also reveals aspects of Macmillan's wider activities and inner concerns, his anxieties, his views on his role and what he hoped to achieve, casting light beyond the 'unflappable' exterior onto the character of one of the most enigmatic figures in modern British political history.