Political Autobiography and the Art of the Plausible: R. A. Butler at the Foreign Office, 1938–1939
R. A. Butler has been one of the outstanding figures in twentieth-century British politics. After his death The Times described him as ‘the creator of the modern educational system, the key-figure in the revival of post-war Conservatism, arguably the most successful chancellor since the war and un-questionably a Home Secretary of reforming zeal’. His record of achievement was unequalled by his rivals in the contests for the party leadership in 1957 and in 1963, but on both occasions the leadership eluded him. How and why this happened was understandably of the greatest interest to those who reviewed Rab's memoirs, The art of the possible, which were published in 1971. These memoirs won unanimous praise for their literary excellence, but otherwise met with a rather mixed reception. Enoch Powell, one of Rab's supporters in 1963, described them as ‘a work of astonishing self-revelation [belonging] with the classic Confessions. Augustine and Rousseau were not more unsparing of themselves than Rab…’ The ‘large episodes’ of Rab's career, Powell went on, ‘are treated with a generous vision (including, it need not be added, a generosity to Rab) which leaves the reader with improved understanding and perspective’. Powell's comments were echoed by others on the Right, but the Left was more critical. Anthony Howard noted that ‘what tend…to get wholly left out are the mistakes and blunders’ – the now infamous Villacoublay meeting during the Suez crisis; and Rab's astonishing admission to the journalist George Gale during the 1964 campaign that the election was slipping Labour's way. Harold Wilson, who had offered Rab the mastership of Trinity, was perhaps the least charitable of all. He found The art of the possible disappointing because, he claimed, Rab underwrote the great occasions. Rab's reticence about Suez, however, upset Wilson less than the description of his tribulations at the hands of Labour MPs as government spokesman for the policy of non-intervention during the Spanish Civil War. Here was an issue which could excite the older soldiers of the British Left, and if Wilson was alone among Rab's reviewers in making more than passing reference to Rab's association with appeasement this was why.
'The fools have stumbled on their best man by accident' : an analysis of the 1957 and 1963 Conservative Party leadership selections
This thesis assesses the outcomes of the 1957 and 1963 Conservative Party 
Leadership Selections of Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home. It analyses 
the two selections using an original analytical framework, that demonstrates the 
importance of both individual and situational criteria in determining the outcomes of 
leadership selections. The individual criteria are the party status of the candidates, and 
their actions and conduct during the selections. The situational criteria are the situation 
and circumstances surrounding the selections, the formal and informal aspects of the 
selection procedure used, and the candidates fulfilment of acceptability, electability, 
and governability. Acceptability, (the need to retain or maintain party unity), 
electability, (the need to be electable), and governability, (the ability to govern), are the 
three core situational criteria on which the candidates are judged. This framework was 
developed to offer a full and inclusive explanation of the outcomes of the two 
leadership selections, because the existing analyses of leadership selections has a 
restrictive approach, and does not offer a conclusive and systematic analysis. 
 
 
The thesis demonstrates that the outcomes of the 1957 and 1963 leadership 
selections have clear parallels and distinctions in their outcomes. Both selections 
produced a stop-gap leader in a time of crisis for the Conservative Party. However, the 
situations were clearly distinct, and this was influential in the outcome. The 1957 
selection occurred following a crisis over foreign policy, while the 1963 selection 
occurred during a deep-seated period of domestic crisis and upheaval. In January 
1957, the Conservatives had three years before a general election had to be held, while 
in October 1963, a general election was imminent within twelve months. The selection 
procedure was influential in both selections. The informal aspects of the procedure 
were more influential in 1957, while the procedure had become more formalised in 
1963, and this prepared the way for the establishment of formal leadership elections in 
the Conservative Party in 1965. The choice of Macmillan and Home was made because 
of the circumstances in which the selections occurred, and because they fulfilled the 
three core criteria more conclusively than the other candidates. In both outcomes, 
acceptability was clearly the most important core criteria because the selections 
occurred at a time of severe disunity in the party, and this deemed party unity as the 
crucial task of the new leader. In 1957, Macmillan was selected as he fulfilled the 
requirements of the situation better than R. A. Butler, the other candidate. In 1963, 
Home became leader because of the weaknesses apparent in the other candidates, and 
was the compromise candidate to retain party unity. 
 
 
This thesis concludes that the wider individual and situational criteria set the 
terms of reference on which the core situational criteria of acceptability, electability, 
and governability are judged. The most important wider criteria were the candidates' 
actions during the selection, the selection procedure, and the situation that the 
selection occurred in. This demonstrates the utility of the analytical framework 
developed in the study.
Another Globe Theatre
[DDEN away in one of Robert Fludd's works, among Rosicrucian symbols and samples of precocious scientific thought, is that rarest of all birds, a visual representation of a theatre of the Elizabethan type.' Learned Shakespearians seem to have passed it by; and no wonder, for the engraving occurs in one of Fludd's rarest books, the De Naturali, Supernaturali, Praeternaturali, et Contranaturali Microcosmi Historia published in Oppenheim in i6i9; and the chapter in which it appears is, of all things, that on mnemotechnics, or in Fludd's language: "De Animae Memorativae Scientia, qui Vulgo Ars Memoriae Vocatur". Obviously, before we enter into a discussion of the print, we shall have to understand how a theatre, any theatre, came to find its place in an exposition of the mnemonic art. Fludd himself seems to provide the clue in an autobiographical note, in which he relates how the new interest came to him, while residing in Nimes in Southern France, under the impact, as one is bound to assume, of the great Roman theatre there; and how, having learned to take delight in "the sweetness of that art" he retired to Avignon to explore it, and finally imparted his knowledge to a group of Provenqal noblemen and to the Duc de Guise. But in thus tracing the origin of his interest Fludd is more than a little disingenuous, for he forgets that the project of using a theatre as a mnemotechnic tool must have come to him from a book then a few decades old and already a classic in the field, namely Giulio Camillo's Idea del Teatro of i550.2 It was from there that he derived the idea of identifying the levels in the Divine plan with the superimposed rows of seats in the ancient theatre and of thus giving to all concepts their place within an architectural scheme. Camillo had also been the first to think of mnemotechnics not merely as a means for retaining the contents of a particular lecture or speech, and of thus training oneself for delivery without the benefit of notes, but rather as a device for impressing upon the mind the universal order of things. He had upheld the older doctrines only in so far as he believed, as all orators had done since Cicero's and Quintilian's time, that the best way of summoning up ideas was to formulate them in terms of images fitted to facilitate recall, then to place these mentally upon various architectural parts, and to take them down, when the corresponding passages in the speech had been reached.