Abstract
At 11.00 a.m. on 18 October 1963, Queen Elizabeth II went to see a 69-year-old man at the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers. This was no ordinary royal visit. The patient was Harold Macmillan, Conservative prime minister from 1957 until earlier that morning, when he had tendered his resignation. Shortly afterwards, the Queen controversially invited the Foreign Secretary, a member of the House of Lords, to try to form a new government. After consultations with colleagues, the Earl of Home officially succeeded to the premiership the next day. There remained one more obstacle to overcome, however, and on 23 October the ‘14th Earl’ disclaimed his title under the Peerage Act. As Sir Alec Douglas-Home, he became the ‘unremembered Prime Minister’.1
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Notes
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© 2014 Andrew Holt
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Holt, A. (2014). Introduction. In: The Foreign Policy of the Douglas-Home Government. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137284419_1
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