Harold MacMillan

Harold Macmillan arrives in The Crown as the patrician Conservative who inherits the premiership after Anthony Eden's collapse, picking up the pieces of Suez with a cool, unflappable air. He speaks in measured, literary sentences, projects Edwardian calm, and clearly intends to restore quiet competence to a government that has just humiliated itself.

Anton Lesser plays him as a man of studied composure, using pauses and dry understatement to suggest a mind working several moves ahead. The performance finds the anxiety beneath the imperturbable exterior — the effort of holding a shaken government and a wounded national pride together while never letting the mask slip in front of the Queen.