Editing Harold Macmillan (section)

===Historians' assessments of Macmillan's premiership===
[[C. P. Snow]] wrote to Macmillan that his reputation would endure as, like Churchill, he was "psychologically interesting".{{sfn|Thorpe|2010|p=619}}

An early biographer [[George Hutchinson (historian)|George Hutchinson]] called him "The Last Edwardian at Number Ten" (1980), mistakenly in the view of Nigel Fisher.{{sfn|Fisher|1982|p=369}} Fisher described him as "complex, almost chameleon".{{sfn|Fisher|1982|p=364}} At times he portrayed himself as the descendant of a Scottish crofter, as a businessman, aristocrat, intellectual and soldier. Labour leader Harold Wilson wrote that his "role as a poseur was itself a pose".{{sfn|Fisher|1982|p=365}} Wilson also argued that behind the public nonchalance lay a real professional.{{sfn|Fisher|1982|p=369}} Fisher also wrote that he "had a talent for pursuing progressive policies but presenting them tactfully in a Conservative tone of voice".{{sfn|Fisher|1982|p=367}}

Historian [[John Vincent (historian)|John Vincent]] explores the image Macmillan crafted of himself for his colleagues and constituents:

{{quote|He presented himself as a patrician, as the last Edwardian, as a Whig (in the tradition of his wife's family), as a romantic Tory, as intellectual, as a man shaped by the comradeship of the trenches and by the slump of the 1930s, as a shrewd man of business of bourgeois Scottish stock, and as a venerable elder statesman at home with modern youth. There was something in all these views, which he did little to discourage, and which commanded public respect into the early 1960s. Whether he was ever a mainstream Conservative, rather than a skilful exponent of the postwar consensus, is more doubtful.<ref>John Vincent, "Macmillan, Harold" in Fred M. Leventhal, ed., ''Twentieth-century Britain: an encyclopedia'' (Garland, 1995) p. 488.</ref>}}

[[Alistair Horne]], his official biographer, concedes that after his re-election in 1959 Macmillan's premiership suffered a series of major setbacks.{{sfn|Horne|1989|p=214}}

Campbell writes that: "a late developer who languished on the back benches ... in the 1930s, Macmillan seized his opportunity when it came with flair and ruthlessness, and [until about 1962] filled the highest office with compelling style". However, he argues that Macmillan is remembered as having been "a rather seedy conjuror", famous for Premium Bonds, Beeching's cuts to the railways, and the Profumo Scandal. He is also remembered for "stop-go" economics. In the 1980s the aged Macmillan was seen as "a revered but slightly pathetic figure".{{sfn|Campbell|2010|p=292}}

[[Dominic Sandbrook]] writes that Macmillan's final weeks were typical of his premiership, "devious, theatrical and self-seeking". Macmillan is best remembered for the "affluent society", which he inherited rather than created in the late 1950s, but chancellors came and went and by the early 1960s economic policy was "nothing short of a shambles", while his achievements in foreign policy made little difference to the lives of the public. By the time he left office, largely unlamented at the time, he was associated not with prosperity but with "anachronism and decay".{{cn|date=October 2022}}

[[D. R. Thorpe]] writes that by the early 1960s Macmillan was seen as "the epitome of all that was wrong with anachronistic Britain. This was an unfair charge." "The essence of his persona was as elusive as mercury." He was not a member of "[[the Establishment]]"—in fact he was a businessman who had ''married into'' the aristocracy and a rebel Chancellor of Oxford. "He had style in abundance, (and) was a star on the world stage". Thorpe argues that despite his 1960 "Winds of Change" speech, he was largely pushed into rapid independence for African countries by Maudling and Macleod.{{sfn|Thorpe|2010|pp=614–17}}

Richard Lamb argues that Macmillan was "by far the best of Britain's postwar Prime Ministers, and his administration performed better than any of their successors". Lamb argues that it is unfair to blame Macmillan for excessively quick African independence (resulting in many former colonies becoming dictatorships), or for the Beeching Plan (which was accepted by Labour in 1964, although Macmillan himself had reservations and had asked civil servants to draw up plans for extra road building), and argues that had he remained in power Macmillan would never have allowed inflation to get as far out of hand as it did in the 1970s.{{sfn|Lamb|1995|pp=14–15}}

{{Earls of Stockton family tree}}