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Rating: 
Summary: Out of focus
Review: This is the second, and concluding part of Alistair Horne's biography of Harold Macmillan. It concentrates almost exclusively on Macmillan's years as Prime Minister (1957-1963).As with the preceding volume, this is a very well-written account: Horne succeeds in making history accessible, and yet does not dodge analysis of deeply complicated subjects. Three huge issues dominate the book: (a) Britain's relations with Europe and the first (abortive) attempt to join the EEC; (b) East-West relations, including the Cuban Missiles Crisis of 1962; and (c) the continued death throes of the British Empire. Horne only touches briefly upon domestic policy and the internal affairs of the Conservative Party (the Profumo Affair could hardly be ignored). In defense of this comparative lack of analysis, he states, that, for example, the problems of how to disengage from imperial commitments distracted most British politicians of the time from domestic issues (I suppose that there is an unwritten ironic history of the British Empire as a curse to the British themselves). However, notwithstanding Horne's defence of his method, and allowing for the possibility that it may have been the case that Macmillan was just not interested in, or simply did not have the time to devote to domestic issues, I still felt that the book was imbalanced. Domestic events are of huge importance to politicians (General Elections are rarely won or lost on the conduct of foreign affairs). I felt that there was a need for more socio-economic analysis of how Britain changed in the Macmillan years. Horne does little more than throw any blame onto the previous Attlee government, and cite outdated management and trades union practices. This is shallow reactionary analysis, undeserving of the scholarly effort put into the rest of the book. To take issue with Horne's stance, it is not good enough to describe outdated practices in industry yet accept them without demur when they occur in political and academic life: I got the impression that Britain was being run almost like a refined gentlemen's club rather than a modern country, and you can't get much more anachronistic than announcing the election for the Chancellorship of Oxford University in Latin ("Mauricius Haraldus Macmillan" indeed!). It's no good elites (including historians) blaming others for being out of tune with the times whilst they themselves belong to associations and institutions which appear to most Britons as belonging to the Dark Ages. A little more humility and objective contextual analysis would have improved the book here. Another fly in the ointment was Horne's occasional slips in political objectivity. Biographers have a tendency either to sympathise with their subjects or seek to destroy them. Rarely does one find a wholly objective analysis. The reader has to allow for that, but when it is coupled with plainly wierd conclusions, it does grate: for example, Horne (rightly) praises Macmillan's swift reaction to a threat to Kuwait from Iraq in which the dispatch of a contingent of British troops helped deter the Iraqis from invading, but then goes on to ruin his case by making a direct comparison to the Falklands War. The two cases are not comparable - indeed it can be argued that the Conservative government's withdrawal of British presence in the South Atlantic encouraged the Argentinians. This book was meant to be an anlaysis of Macmillan, not a quietly sung hymn to Margaret Thatcher.
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