Greater love hath no man," said Liberal MP and future party leader
Jeremy Thorpe , "than that he should lay down his friends for his life." Thorpe was referring to Prime Minister Harold
Macmillan's "night of the long knives" in August 1962, when he sacked a third of his cabinet.
In this season of cabinet reshuffles, Michael Cockerell reopens the file on this unprecedented act of political butchery, mixing rare archive footage with recollections of some of those involved. Was it panic on the part of the unflappable Macmillan, acting to put down a plot to overthrow him? If so, who was behind it? Producer Michael Cockerell
SerieseditorRoyDavies