Maurice Macmillan


Maurice Victor Macmillan, Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden, , was a British Conservative Party politician and Member of Parliament. He was the only son of Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963.

Background and education

Macmillan was the only son of Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, and Lady Dorothy Cavendish, daughter of Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. He served with the Sussex Yeomanry in Europe in the Second World War. Like his father, he was chairman of Macmillan Publishers, as well as a director of two news agencies.

Political career

Macmillan contested Seaham at the 1945 election, Lincoln in 1951 and Wakefield at a 1954 by-election. He served on Kensington Borough Council from 1949 to 1953, then was elected MP for Halifax at the 1955 general election but lost this seat in 1964. He was then elected for Farnham in 1966. This latter seat became South West Surrey at the 1983 election. He served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury under Alec Douglas-Home, and as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary of State for Employment and Paymaster General under Edward Heath. He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1972.

Family

Macmillan married the Honourable Katharine Ormsby-Gore, daughter of William Ormsby-Gore, 4th Baron Harlech, on 22 August 1942. They had four sons and a daughter:
Macmillan was for a time the owner of Highgrove House, which he sold to the Prince of Wales in 1980. Upon his father's elevation to the peerage as Earl of Stockton on 24 February 1984, Macmillan acquired the courtesy title Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden. He held the title for just days, because he died on 10 March 1984, in Westminster, London, following a heart operation. He was 63. His father outlived him by almost three years, dying in December 1986 at the age of 92.
Macmillan's son Alexander has held the title 2nd Earl of Stockton since the death of the first Earl.

Arms