Maurice Harold Macmillan, First Earl of Stockton, 10 February 1894 - 29 December 1986

Abstract

In Harold Macmillan, first Earl of Stockton, the Society has lost arguably the most distinguished and certainly one of the longest lived of recent Fellows elected under Statute 12, that is for services and achievements outside the range of the natural sciences. He was also one of the most skilful of 20th-century prime ministers, and the last public figure to grow to maturity before the outbreak, in August 1914, of World War I. He was highly endow ed by nature with first-class mental equipment, marred only by the fact that his distinguished military service prevented the acquisition of the university degree, which he would undoubtedly otherwise have achieved, almost certainly with a double first to his credit. His complex inner character is m ore difficult to assess. He was very much his own man. He was something of an actor, playing several parts, the crofter’s great-grandson, the duke’s son-in-law, the flaneur in Edwardian society who survived into another age, and latterly the decrepit elder statesman, given to reminiscence and often to historical analogy, sometimes a little far-fetched. Of undoubted religious commitment, unquestionable personal integrity and of proven physical courage displayed often in the first, and once at least during the second world war, he was nonetheless somewhat devious in political manoeuvre and, occasionally, as in the Suez crisis, given to sudden and even contentious changes of mind.