Macmillan Returning To Publishing Business

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30275, 30 October 1963, Page 19

Macmillan Returning To Publishing Business

(N^Z.PA.-Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, Oct. 29. The former Prime Minister, Mr Harold Macmillan will soon be back at work in the family publishing business founded 120 years ago by his grandfather. The POO employees in the grey-bricked House of Macmillan are looking forward to the return after an absence of 12 years of the man they know as ‘‘Mr Harold.” Mr Macmillan, aged 69, gave up his post as joint managing director of the firm when he became Housing Minister in 1951.

Last week it was announced that he will rejoin the business he first entered in 1920. as soon as he is fully recovered from his prostate gland operation.

One member of the staff at the firm’s offices, near Leicester square, said: “We are a closely knit family here and we would aH love to have Mr Harold back ” He will rejoin his 77-year-old elder brother. Mr Daniel Macmillan “Mr Dan” while his son, Mr Maurice Macmillan, is leaving the business because of his post in Sir Alec Douglas-Home's new Government.

Mr Harold Macmillan’s colleagues have a great respect for his judgment as a publisher. His biggest coup was “Gone With the Wind” which sold more than a million copies and is still doing good business. Since toe firm was founded on November 10, 1843, it has had several successes. The first big hit was “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” in 1857. But it turned down the poetry of W. B. Yeats as being “too silly” and rejected early novels by George Bernard Shaw as “too disagreeable.”

The business was begun by Daniel and Alexander Macmillan, who were poor crofters from the Scottish Isle of Arran.

When the United States interests were sold in 1951 they realised £1,000,000.