Over the garden wall
THE Treasury has a bone to pick with Harold Macmillan. It is not just that he routed its three senior ministers when they wanted to cut public spending, or that he passed off their resignations as a little local difficulty. Far worse, he was the Chancel- lor who knocked down the garden wall. Lady Dorothy Macmillan (so I learn from Alistair Horne's new biography) com- plained that 11 Downing Street had a north-facing garden, which would get more sunlight but for its boundary wall with the garden of Number 10. Down it went (the Macmillans still crouching in the corner, to keep out of their neighbours' line of sight) and down it has stayed. Territorial and other aggression has followed. Where is my wall, Nigel Lawson must ask, when I need it? He should resolve to go down in Treasury folklore as the Chancellor who put it back, to a design by an experienced hand, like Maginot, or Hadrian.
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