Never So Good

Set against a back-drop of fading Empire, war, the Suez crisis, vintage champagne, adultery and vicious Tory politics at the Ritz, Never So Good paints the portrait of a brilliant, witty but complex man, at times comically and, in the end, tragically out of kilter with his times

Harold Macmillan, the Eton-educated idealist who rushed, with Homer's Iliad under his arm, to do his duty in the Grenadier Guards, is tormented by the harsh experiences of war and an unhappy marriage

His career in the 1930s is blocked by his loyalty to Winston Churchill, and he nearly loses his life in the Second World War

When at last he becomes Prime Minister he is brought down by the Profumo scandal

Never So Good was premiered at the National Theatre, London, starring Jeremy Irons