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Rating: 
Summary: Good Stuff.
Review: I enjoyed reading this book very much. This first volume of Alistair Horne's two volume life of Harold Macmillan covers the years 1894-1956, from Macmillan's birth to his assumption of the office of Prime Minister following the Suez Crisis. Given that this is a two-volume work, I assume that the second volume will largely concentrate on Macmillan's premiership. As such, this book felt like a prelude to that. Nonetheless, it was a good read. Before I read the book, I knew that Macmillan had been wounded on the Somme, that he was the MP for Stockton-on-Tees (an area of north-east England undergoing the ravages of industrial decline), and of his role in North Africa and Italy in World War Two. What did come as a surprise was the detail of his tortured private life, in particular of his wife's long affair with Bob Boothby, and his ambiguous attitude to Stockton-on-Tees, given his long association with the town (he tried constantly to get a safer Parliamentary seat). To Macmillan's credit was his opposition to the Munich settlement and his work with the Americans and Free French in World War Two. Having said that, Horne does not shy away from examining Macmillan's involvement in the forced repatriation of anti-Soviet forces to the Red Army immediately after hostilies ceased. More could have been written about Macmillan's role in the house building initiative in post-war Britain. This may seem a very dry subject, but at the time I believe it was perceived as being vital to both the Conservative Party (and indeed Macmillan's) political ambitions. On Suez, Macmillan comes over as an accomplished political opportunist. He was deeply involved in the planning of the Suez debacle, yet Prime Minister Eden lost office because of it, whereas Macmillan succeeded in becoming Prime Minister. All of the main actors in the British government who supported military intervention in Egypt come over as essentially out-of-step with the new emerging world order. Theirs was the ultimate blame, and Horne's attempts to lay some of the responsibility at the door of the USA did feel to me to be unconvincing. In all, a good read about an interesting life, and also a chronicle of a changing Britain. I'm looking forward to Volume 2.
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