Banquo's Ghost: Lord Salisbury, Harold Macmillan, and the High Politics of Decolonization, 1957-1963

This article reconstructs the bitter political argument betweenLord Salisbury and Harold Macmillan over decolonization. Inorder to do so it makes extensive use of their private papers.It describes their view of each other and their political manoeuvres.The article argues that Macmillan and Salisbury themselves wereso obsessed by their conflict that it dominated much of theprime minister's thinking on the empire throughout his premiership.The obsessive nature of the struggle was a result of genuineideological differences but took on its particular characterbecause the two principals had known each since their schooldays.The account contends that a political contest between intimatescan best be understood through the lens of ‘intimate history’.