Editing Harold Macmillan (section)

==Early life==

===Family===
Macmillan was born on 10 February 1894, at 52 [[Cadogan Place]] in [[Chelsea, London|Chelsea]], London, to Maurice Crawford Macmillan, a publisher, and the former Helen (Nellie) Artie Tarleton Belles, an artist and socialite from [[Spencer, Indiana]].{{sfn|Fisher|1982|p=2}} He had two brothers, Daniel, eight years his senior, and Arthur, four years his senior.{{sfn|Horne|2008|p=9}} His paternal grandfather, [[Daniel MacMillan]], who founded [[Macmillan Publishers]], was the son of a Scottish [[crofter]] from the [[Isle of Arran]].{{sfn|Campbell|2010|p=245}} Macmillan considered himself a Scot.<ref>"Winds of Change" speech, minute 29:04. {{cite web |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c07MiYfpOMw |title=PM Harold Macmillan – Wind of Change Speech at the Cape Town Parliament – 3 February 1960 |website=YouTube |date=25 March 2016 |access-date=4 December 2017 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171124063722/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c07MiYfpOMw |archive-date=24 November 2017}}</ref>

===Education and early political views===
Macmillan received an intensive early education, closely guided by his American mother. He learned French at home every morning from a succession of nursery maids, and exercised daily at Mr Macpherson's Gymnasium and Dancing Academy, around the corner from the family home.{{sfn|Horne|2008|p=13}} From the age of six or seven he received introductory lessons in classical Latin and Greek at [[The Eaton House Group of Schools#Eaton House Belgravia Pre-Prep and Prep|Mr Gladstone's day school]], close by in [[Sloane Square]].{{sfn|Williams|2010|p=15}}<ref>{{cite news |title=Mr T.S. Morton |date=23 January 1962 |work=The Times }}</ref>

Macmillan attended [[Summer Fields School]], [[Oxford]] (1903–06). He was Third Scholar at [[Eton College]],{{sfn|Horne|1988|p=15}} but his time there (1906–10) was blighted by recurrent illness, starting with a near-fatal attack of pneumonia in his first half (term); he missed his final year after being taken ill,{{sfn|Horne|2008|p=16}}<ref>Simon Ball, ''The Guardsmen, Harold Macmillan, Three Friends and the World They Made'', (London, Harper Collins), 2004, p. 19.</ref> and was taught at home by private tutors (1910–11), notably [[Ronald Knox]], who did much to instil his [[High Church]] [[Anglicanism]].{{sfn|Williams|2010|pp=19–26}} He won an [[exhibition (scholarship)]] to [[Balliol College, Oxford]].{{sfn|Horne|1988|p=15}}

In his youth, he was an admirer of the policies and leadership of a succession of [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal]] prime ministers, starting with [[Henry Campbell-Bannerman]], who came to power when Macmillan was 11 years old and [[H. H. Asquith]], whom he later described as having "intellectual sincerity and moral nobility", and particularly of Asquith's successor, [[David Lloyd George]], whom he regarded as a "man of action", likely to accomplish his goals.{{sfn|Thorpe|2010}}{{pn|date=October 2022}}

Macmillan went up to Balliol College in 1912, where he joined many political societies. His political opinions at this stage were an eclectic mix of moderate conservatism, moderate liberalism and [[Fabian Society|Fabian]] socialism. He read avidly about [[Benjamin Disraeli|Disraeli]], but was also particularly impressed by a speech by Lloyd George at the [[Oxford Union Society]] in 1913, where he had become a member. Macmillan was a protégé of the [[List of Presidents of the Oxford Union|president of the Union Society]] [[Walter Monckton]], later a Cabinet colleague; as such, he became secretary then junior treasurer (elected unopposed in March 1914, then an unusual occurrence) of the Union, and would in his biographers' view "almost certainly" have been president had the war not intervened.{{sfn|Horne|1988|p=22}}<ref>Thorpe 2010, p. 41</ref> He obtained a First in [[Honour Moderations]], informally known as 'Mods' (consisting of Latin and Greek, the first half of the four-year Oxford ''[[Literae Humaniores]]'' course, informally known as "Classics"), in 1914. With his final exams over two years away, he enjoyed an idyllic [[Trinity term]] at Oxford, just before the outbreak of the First World War.<ref>''Supermac''.</ref>

===War service===
Volunteering as soon as war was declared, Macmillan was commissioned as a temporary [[second lieutenant]] in the [[King's Royal Rifle Corps]] on 19 November 1914.<ref>Thorpe 2011, pp. 47–48</ref><ref>{{London Gazette |issue=28979 |supp=y |page=9505 |date=17 November 1914}}</ref> Promoted to lieutenant on 30 January 1915,<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=29500 |supp=y |page=2533 |date=7 March 1916}}</ref> he soon transferred to the [[Grenadier Guards]].<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=29376 |supp=y |page=11582 |date=19 November 1915}}</ref> He fought on the front lines in [[Western Front (World War I)|France]], where the casualty rate was high, including the probability of an "early violent death".<ref>Thorpe 2010, p. 49</ref> He served with distinction and was wounded on three occasions. Shot in the right hand and receiving a glancing bullet wound to the head in the [[Battle of Loos]] in September 1915, Macmillan was sent to Lennox Gardens in [[Chelsea, London|Chelsea]] for hospital treatment, then joined a reserve battalion at [[Chelsea Barracks]] from January to March 1916, until his hand had healed. He then returned to the front lines in France. Leading an advance platoon in the [[Battle of Flers–Courcelette]] (part of the [[Battle of the Somme]]) in September 1916, he was severely wounded, and lay for over twelve hours in a shell hole, sometimes feigning death when Germans passed, and reading [[Aeschylus]] in the original [[Ancient Greek|Greek]].<ref>MacMillan 2010, p. 89</ref> [[Raymond Asquith]], eldest son of the prime minister, was a brother officer in Macmillan's regiment and was killed that month.<ref>{{citation|last=Lawton|first=John|year=1992|title=1963: Five Hundred Days|publisher=Hodder and Stoughton|location=Sevenoaks, UK|isbn=0-340-50846-9}}</ref>

Macmillan spent the final two years of the war in [[King Edward VII's Hospital]] in Grosvenor Gardens undergoing a series of operations.<ref>Ball ''Guardsmen'', p. 64.</ref> He was still on crutches at the [[Armistice of 11 November 1918]].<ref>Thorpe 2010, p. 58</ref> His hip wound took four years to heal completely, and he was left with a slight shuffle to his walk and a limp grip in his right hand from his previous wound, which affected his handwriting.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://spartacus-educational.com/PRmacmillan.htm |title=Harold Macmillan |access-date=13 June 2015 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150321185432/http://spartacus-educational.com/PRmacmillan.htm |archive-date=21 March 2015}} Spartacus Educational website biography.</ref>

Macmillan saw himself as both a "gownsman" and a "swordsman" and would later display open contempt for other politicians (e.g. [[Rab Butler]], [[Hugh Gaitskell]], [[Harold Wilson]]) who had not seen military service in either World War.{{sfn|Campbell|2010|p=246–247}}

===Canadian aide-de-campship===
Of the scholars and exhibitioners of his year, only he and one other survived the war.{{sfn|Williams|2010|p=31}} As a result, he refused to return to [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] to complete his degree, saying the university would never be the same;{{sfn|Horne|2008|page=49}} in later years he joked that he had been "sent down by [[Wilhelm II|the Kaiser]]".<ref>Thorpe 2010, pp. 42–45; "sent down" is a university term for [[Expulsion (education)|"expelled"]]</ref>

Owing to the impending contraction of the Army after the war, a regular commission in the Grenadiers was out of the question.{{sfn|Williams|2010|p=49}} However, at the end of 1918 Macmillan joined the Guards Reserve Battalion at Chelsea Barracks for "light duties".{{sfn|Thorpe|2010|p=62}} On one occasion he had to command reliable troops in a nearby park as a unit of Guardsmen was briefly refusing to reembark for France, although the incident was resolved peacefully. The incident prompted an inquiry from the War Office as to whether the Guards Reserve Battalion "could be relied on".<ref>Macmillan 1966, pp. 107–108. This period saw disturbances amongst British troops in France, which was of grave worry to the Government as the Russian and German revolutions had been accompanied by army mutinies. In the end the crisis was resolved by giving priority for demobilisation to men who had served the longest.</ref>

Macmillan then served in [[Ottawa]], Canada, in 1919 as [[aide-de-camp]] (ADC) to [[Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire]], then [[Governor General of Canada]], and his future father-in-law.{{sfn|Horne|2008|p=52}} The engagement of Captain Macmillan to the Duke's daughter Lady Dorothy was announced on 7 January 1920.{{sfn|Williams|2010|p=55}} He relinquished his commission on 1 April 1920.<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=31958 |supp=y|page=7073|date=29 June 1920}} ''The London Gazette'' states that he held and retained the rank of lieutenant.</ref> As was common for contemporary former officers, he continued to be known as 'Captain Macmillan' until the early 1930s and was listed as such in every general election between 1923 and 1931.{{sfn|Thorpe|2010|pp=72, 76–77, 88, 109, 118}} As late as his North African posting of 1942–43 he reminded Churchill that he held the rank of captain in the Guards reserve.{{sfn|Horne|1989|p=155}}

===Macmillan Publishers===
On his return to London in 1920 he joined the family publishing firm [[Macmillan Publishers]] as a junior partner. In 1936, Harold and his brother Daniel took control of the firm, with the former focusing on the political and non-fiction side of the business.{{sfn|Thorpe|2010}}{{pn|date=October 2022}} Harold resigned from the company on appointment to ministerial office in 1940. He resumed working with the firm from 1945 to 1951 when the party was in opposition.