HANKEY: Man of Secrets

by Stephen Roskill ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 1973

The book jacket makes him look like David Niven, but this second volume of a staggeringly thorough biography of the British Cabinet Secretary confirms the impression that Maurice Hankey was the quintessential civil servant, a man of humble origins who rose to Colonel and a knighthood, and (as Roskill keeps reminding us) an irreproachably uxorious middle-class husband and father. ""The most powerful men are not public men,"" Hankey once copied out from Disraeli; his own power as Cabinet Secretary fluctuated depending on the Prime Minister, and after the fall of his beloved Lloyd George, Hankey suffered, especially during Baldwin's tenure. This installment stretches from the Paris Peace Conference to the 1931 crisis, and while any but the most specialized scholars may find it dull and over-particular, it does give a sense of the arteries of the British bureaucracy. Hankey had his fingers in everything as a sort of majordomo to the elite -- he was a ferocious organizer of strike-breaking, for one thing, and a stalwart advocate of rearmament during this period (though his relations with co-thinker Churchill seem tenuous and vexed). The adulatory Roskill conscientiously points out that during these years Hankey exhibited ""a hardening of character and a loss of sentiment and sensibility."" Moreover, the first volume's war climate was more glamorous; but this remains a necessary, if unprovocative, source for students of British policy and practice between 1919 and 1931. And the enthusiastic reception of the first volume guarantees a follow-up readership.

Pub Date: Oct. 4, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION