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hypochondriacal, he convinced himself that he could not continue to lead the party. On
the eve of his prostatectomy, writing from his hospital bed in the King Edward VII
Hospital, he told Elizabeth he must of necessity resign. She telephoned constantly to ask
after his health in the days after his operation – three times on one day – but in a state
of post-operative wooziness he could not understand what she was saying. Meanwhile
the Conservative Party Conference at Blackpool opened in confusion with four leading
contenders to the succession, Hailsham, Butler, Maudling and Home. Hailsham and
Butler appeared to rule themselves out, the first from over-confidence the second from
apparent diffidence (he had apparently been told three months previously by the
chairman of the 1922 Committee representing all Conservative back-bench MPs that ‘the
chaps won’t have you’). Macmillan had already sounded out Home as a possible leader;
from his hospital bed the ailing Prime Minister determined to be in charge of the process
of choosing his successor. Conscious of the accusations at the time of his own succession
that the choice had been virtually in the hands of two peers and limited to the views of
the Cabinet, he ordered the Lord Chancellor to consult the Cabinet, the Chief Whip to
talk to other ministers and Conservative MPs, while the Chairman of the Conservative
Party was to sound out the constituencies and Lord St Aldwyn the politically active
Conservative peers. After these consultations and communications with the four
leadership candidates, Macmillan spent the day, 17 October, writing a long letter to
Elizabeth meticulously setting out the course of events of the past days. ‘I am anxious’,
he told her, ‘that everything done so far should be amply recorded in writing and not
give rise to the kind of confusion by which previous crises have afterwards been
poisoned with very ill effects to all concerned…’ He had also dictated a ‘top secret’
memorandum, which he intended to give her if she asked for his advice, putting the case
for Home:
The important fact in my view is that Lord Home’s candidature has not been set forward on his own merits
but has been thought of as a last-minute method of keeping out Mr Butler now that Lord Hailsham has
(according to the pundits) put himself out of court by his stupid behaviour (at Blackpool)…
Apart from Home’s actual lead, I am impressed by the general goodwill shown towards him, even by those
who give reasons in favour of other candidates, and I cannot fail to come to the opinion that he would be the
best able to secure united support… 17
That afternoon news of the advice to be given the Queen that Home was to be
Macmillan’s successor leaked out. A revolt threatened overnight and the Palace was
lobbied against Home, but the lobbyist was firmly told that the Queen must not be put
in the position of having to choose the leader of the Tory Party. According to one
source, Macmillan asked the Palace to advance his audience with the Queen, which had
been scheduled for 11.45 a.m., in order to forestall any move by the rebels, and on the
morning of the 18th at 11.00, in an unprecedented move for a British sovereign, the
Queen arrived at the hospital for the farewell audience accompanied by Adeane. She
went alone into the hospital boardroom, where a tense and unhappy Prime Minister
waited for her, dressed in a white silk shirt for the occasion but with a bottle in his bed