Volume 10, Number 3 · February 15, 1968
Bright Small Boy
By Conor Cruise O'Brien
The Blast of War 1939-45
by Harold Macmillan
Harper & Row, 623 pp., $11.95
Macmillan: A Study in Ambiguity
by Anthony Sampson
Simon & Schuster, 256 pp., $6.50
The second volume of Macmillan's memoirs is somewhat less rich than was Winds of Change in those haunting, missing-step constructions which are his peculiar contribution to English prose, and perhaps are due to his place in English history. Yet the master has not lost his special touch; rarely but unforgettably the surface of this bland narrative is rippled by some dark pike-like intimation of another life in the depths; a parallel, unspoken, and possibly unspeakable monologue. Words like 'indeed,' 'in spite of,' and 'nevertheless' are for him like Auden's crack in the tea-cup, opening a lane to the land of the dead.
Review, 2673 words
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