Harold Macmillan — Idealist into Manipulator

Abstract

He used to boast that his grandfather was a Scottish crofter, which was being somewhat economical with the truth. The last crofter in his family had been his great-grandfather, as he well knew. Grandfather Daniel Macmillan had come south to become a booksellers’ apprentice in Cambridge, where — with his brother — he founded what was to become the great Macmillan publishing empire. By the time that Harold Macmillan was born, in 1894, the family, already immensely wealthy, had long been established in one of the most fashionable quarters of London, and any Scottish connections were but a distant memory.