ABSTRACT
While officials on the British Nuclear Deterrent Study Group had struggled to reconcile their divergent views on the long-term form of the deterrent during 1959, Macmillan and some of his closest ministerial colleagues were considering in critical fashion the entire future nuclear weapons production programme. During the final months of 1959 there had been some signs of impatience from the Prime Minister over the time which Brook's Future Policy study was taking to complete. During the course of 1960 British attempts to secure the supply of Skybolt from the Americans, and later an offer of Polaris missiles for a UK successor system, were destined to become entangled with the nuclear sharing arrangements for the Western alliance that the Eisenhower administration was starting to formulate. Macmillan had staked a great deal on building on the nuclear legacy he had inherited from his predecessors, Attlee, Churchill and Eden.
