Sir, I am generally a great admirer of Graham Stewart’s meticulous research, privileged as I am to witness much of it at first hand. However, his attempt to squeeze Harold Macmillan into his story on political nepotism (“They don’t do nepotism like they used to”, Feb 2) is based on an exaggerated statistic. Stewart boldly states that during his premiership Macmillan appointed “85 ministers, of which 35 were his wife’s relations,” and that “seven of them sat in the Cabinet.” Could he possibly name them?

In fact, only one relative by marriage ever sat in his Cabinet, Lord “Bobbety” Salisbury. This was hardly an act of nepotism. Salisbury had first served as a minister under Baldwin and Chamberlain, and had sat in the Cabinets of Churchill and Eden for considerably longer than Macmillan had himself. Ironically, of the three prime ministers he served, Salisbury got on worst with Macmillan. He lasted only two months after Macmillan’s succession and, when he resigned in March

1957, Macmillan compared his loss to the Cabinet to that of “a man who has got rid of an inflamed tooth”.

Rather than the 35 family members who Stewart alleges held ministerial posts under Macmillan, in addition to Salisbury, I can count only four. Stewart mentions the Duke of Devonshire, but fails to note the typically self-effacing irony in his suggestion that nepotism brought about his appointment. In fact, Devonshire’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, written by a distinguished biographer, describes his appointment as having “proved to have been well justified; the Duke was a highly competent minister and fully deserved his \ promotion to minister of state.”

Macmillan’s other two appointments were Lord Lansdowne, a very distant relative, and Julian Amery, his son-in-law, who went on to maintain his ministerial career under Edward Heath. David Ormsby-Gore served under Macmillan, but had first been appointed by Eden. It is also notable that Macmillan’s own son, Maurice, had to wait for preferment until his father retired. Perhaps the conspiracy theory could have been taken one step farther by pointing out that Macmillan was also a distant relative, again by marriage, of President Kennedy.

David Faber
London SW10

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