At the height of the Profumo ministerial sex scandal in 1963, the death knell was sounded on one of Britain’s most successful postwar prime ministers, Harold Macmillan, by a fellow Tory quoting a line from Robert Browning’s poem "The Lost Leader": "Never glad confident morning again.” Nigel Birch’s intervention signaled the "glimmer of twilight” for his boss. Within three months he had departed No 10. And Macmillan was a political giant compared to........

© The Japan Times