The Art Of The Possible, The Memoirs of Lord Butler Signed Hardcover 1971

On offer a hardcover “The Art Of The Possible, The Memoirs of Lord Butler”, by Lord Butler, signed to the title page by the author R.A.Butler

Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden, KG, CH, PC, DL (9 December 1902 – 8 March 1982), also known as R. A. Butler and familiarly known from his initials as Rab, was a prominent British Conservative Party politician; he was effectively Deputy Prime Minister to Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, although he only held the official title for a brief period in 1962-63. He was one of his party’s leaders in promoting the post-war consensus through which the major parties largely agreed on the main points of domestic policy until the 1970s; it is sometimes known as “Butskellism” from a fusion of his name with that of his Labour counterpart, Hugh Gaitskell. Butler had a distinguished academic career before he entered Parliament in 1929. He helped to pass the Government of India Act 1935. Entering the Cabinet in 1941, he served as President of the Board of Education (1941-1945) and oversaw the Education Act 1944. When the Conservatives returned to power in 1951, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1951-1955), Home Secretary (1957-1962), First Secretary of State (1962-1963) and Foreign Secretary (1963-1964). Butler had an exceptionally long ministerial career and was one of only two British politicians (the other being John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon) to have served in three of the four Great Offices of State but never to have been Prime Minister for which he was passed over in 1957 and 1963. In 1965, Butler was appointed Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Butler’s memoirs, The Art of the Possible, appeared in 1971. He wrote that he had decided to “eschew the current autobiographical fashion for multi-volume histories”. (Macmillan was bringing out an autobiography, which would eventually run to six large volumes.) The work, largely ghosted by Peter Goldman, was described as the best single-volume autobiography since Duff Cooper’s Old Men Forget in 1953. Butler opened his memoirs by saying that his career had been split between academia, politics and India and that his main regret was never having been Viceroy of India. He regarded the 1935 India Act and the 1944 Education Act as his “principal legislative achievements”. He also wrote that the way to the top was through rebellion and resignation, but he had gone for “the long haul” and “steady influence”. His obituary in The Times in 1982 called him “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 unquestionably a Home Secretary of reforming zeal”. Along with the 1944 Education Act and Butler’s reforms as Home Secretary, John Campbell sees Butler’s greatest achievement as the “redefine(ing of) the meaning of Conservatism” in opposition by encouraging the careers of talented younger men at the Research Department (Heath, Powell, Maudling, Macleod and Angus Maude, all of whom entered Parliament in 1950), by ensuring Conservative acceptance of the welfare state and a commitment to keeping unemployment low. Macmillan acknowledged Butler’s role in his memoirs but stressed that those were the very policies that he had promoted in vain in the 1930s. Butler enjoyed 26.5 years in office, equaled only by Churchill in the twentieth century. The Economist (27 June 1970) called him “the last real policy-making Chancellor”.

The book is in a fair condition, signs of spotting and foxing, the dustcover is in a good condition and not price clipped £3.75

Published: Hamish Hamilton 1971 (1st Edition)

ISBN 100241020077

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