Iain Macleod
Macleod met Evelyn Hester Mason, "née" Blois, (1915–1999) in September 1939 whilst he was waiting to be called up for army service and she interviewed him for a job as an ambulance driver. After her first husband was killed in the war, they married on 25 January 1941. The Macleods had a son and a daughter, Torquil and Diana, who were born in 1942 and 1944 respectively. They had a somewhat stormy marriage in which they retained a strong bond despite Macleod conducting a number of what his biographer describes as "romances" with other women (he quotes love letters written by Macleod but does not specifically say they went as far as sexual affairs). As was common for MPs' wives of the era, Eve looked after constituency matters whilst her husband concentrated on his career at Westminster.
Iain Macleod
A brilliant Commons performance made his career. On 27 March 1952, having been called fifth in the debate rather than third as originally scheduled, he spoke after former Health Minister Aneurin Bevan. Beginning his speech with the words "I wish to deal closely and with relish with the vulgar, crude and intemperate speech to which the House of Commons has just listened", he attacked Bevan with facts and figures and commented that a health debate without Bevan would be like "Hamlet without the first gravedigger". Churchill, who had been getting up to leave, stayed to listen and was heard to ask the Chief Whip, Patrick Buchan-Hepburn, who the promising young backbencher was. When summoned to 10 Downing Street on 7 May he claimed to have been half-expecting a reprimand for his refusal to serve a second term as a British representative at the Council of Europe, a job he found boring, but he was instead appointed Minister of Health, which was not a Cabinet position at that time.