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
In 1961 Macleod published a sympathetic biography of former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, whose reputation then stood at a very low ebb because of recent memories of the Munich Agreement. The book was largely ghostwritten by Peter Goldman, whose own promising political career would be aborted when he lost the Orpington by-election the following year. Macleod was most interested in social policy and had most input into the parts up to 1931, including Chamberlain's time as Lord Mayor of Birmingham and as Minister of Health. It had been intended as a potboiler to earn money for his daughter's social season, and Macleod had been reluctant to read seven boxes of papers from Chamberlain's sister Hilda (Chamberlain's letters to whom are an important primary source); it added little to the portrait painted by his official biographer Keith Feiling.