Richard Austen Butler stands as one of the great "might-have-beens" of twentieth-century British political history. One of the most distinguished politicians of his age, twice -- in 1957 and again in 1963 -- he nearly became prime minister, only to have his political ambition thwarted. Yet such were his accomplishments during his career that he rightly deserves a biography of the first caliber, which Anthony Howard has written.

Born into an academic family of long standing, the young Butler excelled in school, winning numerous academic honors while studying at Cambridge. Soon after graduation, he married his first wife, a wealthy heiress who brought into the marriage the wealth that had for so long been a prerequisite of entry into politics. Thus Butler was able to win election to Parliament as a Conservative at the young age of 27, and he soon enjoyed the patronage of the leading Tory politicians of the 1930s.

Butler's luck continued throughout much of his early career. Though a supporter of appeasement during his time as Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office in the late 1930s, Butler was retained when Churchill took office in 1940, becoming President of the Board of Education and authoring the eponymous Butler Act of 1944 which changed the nature of secondary schooling in Britain for generations to come. His expertise in domestic policy led to his selection as the head of the Conservative Research Department after the Tories' defeat in the 1945 election, from which he brought the party to terms with the nascent welfare state and defined its ideological complexion for a generation. By the 1950s, he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the number three man in Churchill's government, with every expectation of becoming prime minister.

Yet as Howard notes, Butler had made powerful enemies. A moderate figure who was more popular in the country than in the party, his support for the welfare state which had emerged in the 1940s earned him the opposition of the right-wing of his own party. More damaging in the end, though, was the enmity of Harold Macmillan, an opponent of Butler's dating back to the 1930s. It was Macmillan who denied him the nomination, slipping past Butler and taking the premiership after Anthony Eden's resignation in 1957. Though Butler would have a second chance when Macmillan subsequently stepped down in 1963, he failed again as the outgoing Prime Minister succeeded in thwarting Butler's ambitions once more by making the Earl of Home his successor, thus bringing an end to Butler's political career.

This is a career that Howard recounts with a journalist's engaging skill, giving us a sense of both the politician and the personality. Yet for all the book's strengths there is little explanation for his ideological shift from the orthodox Toryism of the 1930s to an advocacy of the mixed economy that made him the leading "wet" of the postwar era, nor is there a thorough analysis of the pressing question of Butler's life -- why he failed to attain the brass ring of the premiership. Such questions are important given how the Conservative Party has distanced itself so completely from his policies, and Howard's failure to answer them mars what is otherwise an engaging biography of one of the outstanding figures of postwar British politics. ( )