Talk:Rab Butler

message: What's the deal with "Wab or Hawold"? Is it vandalism or a trancription of a speech impediment? If the latter, a reference or elucidation would be good. 203.221.18.161 11:34, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Kilmuir's memoirsMissingMia (talk) 14:58, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Wab?

message: I deleted the following:
:He was an increasingly successful public speaker. At one dinner party in June 1957, he began a speech with the words: "An after-dinner speech should be like a lady's dress - long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting.".
This is only notable if Butler is the one who came up with the joke. He's not; I just heard the line spoken in The Courtship of Andy Hardy (1942), and presumably it's older than that. YLee (talk) 19:10, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Speech anecdote deleted 

message: Picture is awful. Can we get a better one? Drutt (talk) 19:06, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture 

message: Please see Talk:Great Offices of State#How many held three? for a query about how many politicians achieved the same as Butler. Timrollpickering (talk) 20:30, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Great Offices of State 

message: The article states "In January 1957 Eden resigned as prime minister, and did not give advice to Queen Elizabeth II as to who should succeed him." This is incorrect, and has been rebutted in the past. Eden (by then Lord Avon) wrote the following on 27 November 1970 to Sir Michael Adeane to place a proper record in the Royal Archives.
"I notice that Mr Macmillan's memoirs recently serialised repeat the statement first made in Lord Kilmuir's memoirs, that the Queen did not ask my advice about my successor. Mr Macmillan adds that neither did I volunteer such advice. These statements are incorrect. Her Majesty followed the constitutional procedure and asked me my advice as to her choice of successor. As I consider that all communications between the Sovereign and her Prime Minister are confidential, I do not propose to state here what that advice was, except to say that the course subsequently followed was consistent with that advice."
This is in the Avon Papers, and has been widely quoted in historical works. See also Robert Blake on Eden in the 1986 Dictionary of National Biography: "It is untrue, although often alleged, that the Queen did not consult him about his successor."
I am therefore amending the article accordingly. Salim555 (talk) 22:02, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Butler and Macmillan

message: That is just about the worst photograph I have ever seen in a biography article, and there's lots of terrible ones.  Surely there are available public domain images of such a major British politician of the last century where you can actually make out the man's face?  john k (talk) 16:54, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Happily, now replaced by a rather good image. Tim riley (talk) 21:42, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Photograph 

message: The article lacks citations at an alarming number of places. I have it on my to-do list and hope to get to it in the next few months. Meanwhile, may I resume the conversation, above, about the title of the page? When the exchanges petered out in 2009 they seemed to be heading towards renaming the page "R A Butler" rather than "Rab Butler", and I'd like to add my voice in favour of that. Glad to know if other editors have views. Tim riley (talk) 21:41, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: most of the "uncited" stuff could be cited easily enough from some pretty obvious sources - Butler's own memoirs ("The Art of the Possible"), the 1980s Anthony Howard biog etc.MissingMia (talk) 14:58, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overhaul and title 

message: Great Offices of State says the following share Butler's position of holding only three of four of the Great Offices of State if the four are presumed to be PM, Home Sec, Chancellor, and Foreign Sec. 
* Asquith, Churchill – Chancellor, PM, Home Sec
* Macmillan, Major – Chancellor, PM, Foreign Sec
* Butler, Simon – Chancellor, Home Sec, Foreign Sec
* Wellesley – PM, Home Sec, Foreign Sec (simultaneously)
Callaghan, meanwhile, is alone in holding all four, and so shouldn't be in the article at all in the context of being one of 
"only four British politicians (the others being John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon, John Major, and James Callaghan), to have served in three of the four Great Offices of State"
I think this needs some clarification and until this is done, I'm removing the section that I've recently been editing. 
Maragil (talk) 19:20, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: edit - instead I'm going to roll it back to just Simon & Butler by KasparBot. Maragil (talk) 19:22, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conflicts with Great Offices of State 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion 

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