page_title: Harold Macmillan
section_title: Death and funeral
hierarchical_section_title: Harold Macmillan / Death and funeral
caption_attribution_description: Macmillan family grave at St Giles' Church, Church Lane, Horsted Keynes, district of Mid Sussex, West Sussex, England. An Anglican church built in the 12th–13th century to serve this village in a rural part of Mid Sussex. Many members of the Macmillan family are born* here, including former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. [* I think you mean buried here, Harold was said to be born in Cadogan Place London]
context_page_description: Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC, FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Dubbed "Supermac", he was known for his pragmatism, wit and unflappability.
  Macmillan served in the Grenadier Guards during the First World War. He was wounded three times, most severely in September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. He spent the rest of the war in a military hospital unable to walk, and suffered pain and partial immobility for the rest of his life. After the war Macmillan joined his family business, then entered Parliament at the 1924 general election for the northern industrial constituency of Stockton-on-Tees. After 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, and against appeasement. Rising to high office during the Second World War as a protégé of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Macmillan then served as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Churchill's successor Sir Anthony Eden.
context_section_description: Macmillan had often play-acted being an old man long before real old age set in. As early as 1948 Humphry Berkeley wrote of how "he makes a show of being feeble and decrepit", mentioning how he had suddenly stopped shambling and sprinted for a train. Nigel Fisher tells an anecdote of how Macmillan initially greeted him to his house leaning on a stick, but later walked and climbed steps perfectly well, twice acting lame again and fetching his stick when he remembered his "act". However, in genuine old age he became almost blind, causing him to need sticks and a helping arm.
  Macmillan died at Birch Grove, the Macmillan family mansion on the edge of Ashdown Forest near Chelwood Gate in East Sussex, four days after Christmas in 1986. His age was 92 years and 322 days—the greatest age attained by a British Prime Minister until surpassed by Lord Callaghan on 14 February 2005. His grandson and heir Alexander, Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden, said: "In the last 48 hours he was very weak but entirely reasonable and intelligent. His last words were, 'I think I will go to sleep now'."
  On receiving the news, Thatcher hailed him as "a very remarkable man and a very great patriot", and said that his dislike of "selling the family silver" had never come between them. He was "unique in the affection of the British people".
  Tributes came from around the world. US President Ronald Reagan said: "The American people share in the loss of a voice of wisdom and humanity who, with eloquence and gentle wit, brought to the problems of today the experience of a long life of public service." Outlawed African National Congress president Oliver Tambo sent his condolences: 'As South Africans we shall always remember him for his efforts to encourage the apartheid regime to bow to the winds of change that continue to blow in South Africa.' Commonwealth Secretary-General Sir Shridath Ramphal affirmed: "His own leadership in providing from Britain a worthy response to African national consciousness shaped the post-war era and made the modern Commonwealth possible."
  A private funeral was held on 5 January 1987 at St Giles' Church, Horsted Keynes, West Sussex, where he had regularly worshipped and read the lesson. Two hundred mourners attended, including 64 members of the Macmillan family, Thatcher and former premiers Lord Home and Edward Heath, Lord Hailsham, and "scores of country neighbours". The Prince of Wales sent a wreath "in admiring memory". He was buried beside his wife and next to his parents and his son Maurice, who had died in 1984.
  The House of Commons paid its tribute on 12 January 1987, with much reference made to his book The Middle Way. Thatcher said: "In his retirement Harold Macmillan occupied a unique place in the nation's affections", while Labour leader Neil Kinnock struck a more critical note: "Death and distance cannot lend sufficient enchantment to alter the view that the period over which he presided in the 1950s, while certainly and thankfully a period of rising affluence and confidence, was also a time of opportunities missed, of changes avoided. Harold Macmillan was, of course, not solely or even pre-eminently responsible for that. But we cannot but record with frustration the fact that the vigorous and perceptive attacker of the status quo in the 1930s became its emblem for a time in the late 1950s before returning to be its critic in the 1980s."
  A public memorial service, attended by the Queen and thousands of mourners, was held on 10 February 1987 in Westminster Abbey. Macmillan's estate was assessed for probate on 1 June 1987, with a value of £51,114 (equivalent to £144,831 in 2019).
caption: The Macmillan family graves in 2012 at St Giles' Church, Horsted Keynes. Macmillan's grave is on the right.
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