Revisionism

Reputations, as the latest ranking of 20th-century prime ministers shows, can go up as well as down. Who would have thought in the 1920s that corruption-stained Lloyd George would score so highly now? Or that Harold Macmillan, rebuffed over the Common Market, would be judged so successful a mere half century later? There is hope yet for John Major. Alas, though, for Sir Anthony Eden, who took Britain to war on a false premise (an error that has not yet, we note, harmed the present PM's ranking). Eden seems fated to remain at the bottom of the pile. Even the most revisionist of historians can only accomplish so much.

Reputations, as the latest ranking of 20th-century prime ministers shows, can go up as well as down. Who would have thought in the 1920s that corruption-stained Lloyd George would score so highly now? Or that Harold Macmillan, rebuffed over the Common Market, would be judged so successful a mere half century later? There is hope yet for John Major. Alas, though, for Sir Anthony Eden, who took Britain to war on a false premise (an error that has not yet, we note, harmed the present PM's ranking). Eden seems fated to remain at the bottom of the pile. Even the most revisionist of historians can only accomplish so much.