Harold Macmillan family name Macmillan
Early life
Family
Macmillan was born on 10 February 1894, at 52 Cadogan Place in Chelsea, London, to Maurice Crawford Macmillan (1853–1936), a publisher, and his wife, the former Helen (Nellie) Artie Tarleton Belles (1856–1937), an artist and socialite from Spencer, Indiana. He had two brothers, Daniel, eight years his senior, and Arthur, four years his senior. His paternal grandfather, Daniel MacMillan (1813–1857), who founded Macmillan Publishers, was the son of a Scottish crofter from the Isle of Arran. Macmillan considered himself a Scot.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. From the age of six or seven he received introductory lessons in classical Latin and Greek at Mr Gladstone's day school, close by in Sloane Square.Macmillan attended Summer Fields School, Oxford (1903–06). He was Third Scholar at Eton College, but his time there (1906–10) was blighted by recurrent illness, starting with a near-fatal attack of pneumonia in his first half; he missed his final year after being invalided out, and was taught at home by private tutors (1910–11), notably Ronald Knox, who did much to instil his High Church Anglicanism. He won an exhibition (scholarship) to Balliol College, Oxford.As a child, teenager and later young man, he was an admirer of the policies and leadership of a succession of Liberal prime ministers, starting with Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who came to power when Macmillan was 11 years old, and then 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.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 socialism. He read avidly about 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 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. 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.Return to Macmillan Publishers
In retirement Macmillan took up the chairmanship of his family's publishing house, Macmillan Publishers, from 1964 to 1974. The publishing firm remained in family hands until a majority share was purchased in 1995 by the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group; the imprint, however, persists.
Macmillan brought out a six-volume autobiography:
surname last name patronymic family surname clan name