3.6 Minister Resident in the Mediterranean (1942вЂ“1945).3.4 Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Supply (1940вЂ“1942).1.2 Schooling, university and early political views.Macmillan was the last British prime minister born during the Victorian era, the last to have served in the First World War and the last to receive a hereditary peerage. He was as trenchant a critic of his successors in his old age as he had been of his predecessors in his youth. Following his resignation, Macmillan lived out a long retirement as an elder statesman. Near the end of his premiership, his government was rocked by the Vassall and Profumo scandals, which to cultural conservatives and supporters of opposing parties alike seemed to symbolise moral decay of the British establishment. After the Skybolt Crisis undermined the Anglo-American strategic relationship, he sought a more active role for Britain in Europe, but his unwillingness to disclose United States nuclear secrets to France contributed to a French veto of the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community. Reconfiguring the nation's defences to meet the realities of the nuclear age, he ended National Service, strengthened the nuclear forces by acquiring Polaris, and pioneered the Nuclear Test Ban with the United States and the Soviet Union. In international affairs, Macmillan worked to rebuild the Special Relationship with the United States from the wreckage of the 1956 Suez Crisis (of which he had been one of the architects), and facilitated the decolonisation of Africa. He led the Conservatives to success in 1959 with an increased majority.

In his speech of July 1957 he told the nation it had 'never had it so good', but warned of the dangers of inflation, summing up the fragile prosperity of the 1950s. Benefiting from favourable international conditions, he presided over an age of affluence, marked by low unemployment and high-if uneven-growth. He championed a Keynesian strategy of deficit spending to maintain demand and pursuit of corporatist policies to develop the domestic market as the engine of growth. He supported the welfare state and the necessity of a mixed economy with some nationalised industries and strong trade unions. He was a One Nation Tory of the Disraelian tradition and supported the post-war consensus. When Eden resigned in 1957 following the Suez Crisis, Macmillan succeeded him as prime minister and Leader of the Conservative Party. In the 1950s Macmillan served as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Anthony Eden. He rose to high office during the Second World War as a protГ©gГ© of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He opposed the appeasement of Germany practised by the Conservative government. Losing his seat in 1929, he regained it in 1931, soon after which he spoke out against the high rate of unemployment in Stockton-on-Tees. After the war he joined his family book-publishing business, then entered Parliament at the 1924 general election.

He suffered pain and partial immobility for the rest of his life. Macmillan was badly injured as an infantry officer during the First World War. Caricatured as ' Supermac', he was known for his pragmatism, wit and unflappability. Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC, FRS (10В February 1894В вЂ“ 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies

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