HAROLD Macmillan's name is the most widely known of the quartet of influential men whose lives are chronicled in a new book which will appeal to those who enjoy reading about the world of high-powered politics.

Macmillan was Conservative prime minister of Britain from January 1957 to October 1963. His 'wind of change' speech about Africa was a landmark occasion and he was PM during the sex and security scandal involving Cabinet minister John Profumo, of Christine Keeler infamy.

His link with the other three, Lord Salisbury, Oliver Lyttleton and Harry Crookshank, is that they all went to Eton School, they all fought in and experienced the horror of the First World War as Grenadier Guards officers, and all became powerful figures in politics and business.

The war chapter and passages describing Macmillan's early political life are interestingly revealing. Crookshank was castrated by an exploding shell on the Somme, but within a remarkably short period was up and about again. Macmillan, emotionally wrecked by his wife's affair with fellow politician Bob Boothby, was desperate to succeed in politics but made little headway at first as he even dabbled with Oswald Mosley's New Party in its pre-Fascist days.

The older generation will remember Macmillan, MP for Stockton on Tees, as an ageing men with sad, drooping eyes, a walrus moustache and a distinctive drawl in his voice. One of the valuable insights of The Guardsmen is to discover the early lives of the quartet and the paths that took them into public life.

Updated: 08:43 Wednesday, June 16, 2004