Anthony Eden

Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Conservative politician who served three periods as Foreign Secretary and then a relatively brief term as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 to 1957.

Achieving rapid promotion as a young Member of Parliament, he became Foreign Secretary aged 38, before resigning in protest at Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Mussolini's Italy.^[2][3] He again held that position for most of the Second World War, and a third time in the early 1950s. Having been deputy to Winston Churchill for almost 15 years, he succeeded him as the Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister in April 1955, and a month later won a general election.

Eden's worldwide reputation as an opponent of appeasement, a "man of peace", and a skilled diplomat was overshadowed in 1956 when the United States refused to support the Anglo-French military response to the Suez Crisis, which critics across party lines regarded as an historic setback for British foreign policy, signalling the end of British predominance in the Middle East.^[4] Most historians argue that he made a series of blunders, especially not realising the depth of American opposition to military action.^[5] Two months after ordering an end to the Suez operation, he resigned as Prime Minister on grounds of ill health and because he was widely suspected of having misled the House of Commons over the degree of collusion with France and Israel.^[6]

Eden is generally ranked among the least successful British prime ministers of the 20th century,^[7] although two broadly sympathetic biographies (in 1986 and 2003) have gone some way to shifting the balance of opinion.^[8] Biographer D. R. Thorpe described the Suez Crisis as "a truly tragic end to his premiership, and one that came to assume a disproportionate importance in any assessment of his career."^[9]

The Right Honourable The Earl of Avon KG MC PC
Portrait of Eden as Foreign Secretary
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 6 April 1955 – 9 January 1957
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Preceded by	Sir Winston Churchill
Succeeded by	Harold Macmillan
Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 26 October 1951 – 6 April 1955
Prime Minister	Sir Winston Churchill
Preceded by	Herbert Morrison
Succeeded by	Rab Butler (1962)[nb]
Leader of the Conservative Party
In office 6 April 1955 – 10 January 1957
Preceded by	Sir Winston Churchill
Succeeded by	Harold Macmillan
Ministerial offices Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs In office 28 October 1951 – 6 April 1955 Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill Preceded by Herbert Morrison Succeeded by Harold Macmillan In office 22 December 1940 – 26 July 1945 Prime Minister Winston Churchill Preceded by The Viscount Halifax Succeeded by Ernest Bevin In office 22 December 1935 – 20 February 1938 Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin Neville Chamberlain Preceded by Sir Samuel Hoare Succeeded by The Viscount Halifax Leader of the House of Commons In office 22 November 1942 – 26 July 1945 Prime Minister Winston Churchill Preceded by Sir Stafford Cripps Succeeded by Herbert Morrison Secretary of State for War In office 11 May 1940 – 22 December 1940 Prime Minister Winston Churchill Preceded by Oliver Stanley Succeeded by David Margesson Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs In office 3 September 1939 – 14 May 1940 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain Winston Churchill Preceded by Sir Thomas Inskip Succeeded by The Viscount Caldecote Lord Privy Seal In office 31 December 1933 – 7 June 1935 Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald Preceded by Stanley Baldwin Succeeded by The Marquess of Londonderry
Parliamentary offices Member of Parliament for Warwick and Leamington In office 6 December 1923 – 10 January 1957 Preceded by Ernest Pollock Succeeded by John Hobson Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal Hereditary peerage 12 July 1961 – 14 January 1977 Preceded by Peerage created Succeeded by The 2nd Earl of Avon
Personal details
Born	Robert Anthony Eden 12 June 1897 Windlestone Hall, County Durham, England
Died	14 January 1977 (aged 79) Alvediston, Wiltshire, England
Cause of death	Liver cancer
Resting place	St. Mary's Churchyard, Alvediston
Political party	Conservative
Spouse(s)	Beatrice Beckett (m. 1923; div. 1950) Clarissa Spencer-Churchill (m. 1952)
Children	3, including Nicholas
Alma mater	Eton College Christ Church, Oxford
Military service
Branch/service	British Army
Years of service	1915–1919 1920–1923 1939[1]
Rank	Major
Unit	King's Royal Rifle Corps Durham Light Infantry
Battles/wars	World War I Western Front  Battle of the Somme  Battle of Messines  Battle of Passchendaele  Operation Michael  Hundred Days Offensive
Awards	Military Cross
n.b. ^ Office vacant from 6 April 1955 to 13 July 1962

Family

Eden was born at Windlestone Hall, County Durham, on 12 June 1897. He was born into a very conservative family of landed gentry. He was a younger son of Sir William Eden, 7th and 5th Baronet, a former colonel and local magistrate from an old titled family. Sir William, an eccentric and often foul-tempered man, was a talented watercolourist and collector of Impressionists.^[10][11]

Eden's mother, Sybil Frances Grey, was a member of the famous Grey family of Northumberland (see below). Grey had wanted to marry Francis Knollys, who later became an important Royal adviser. Although she was a popular figure locally, she had a strained relationship with her children, and her profligacy ruined the family fortunes.^[11] Eden's elder brother Tim had to sell Windlestone in 1936.^[12] Rab Butler would later quip that Eden—a handsome but ill-tempered man—was "half mad baronet, half beautiful woman".^[9][13]

Eden's great-grandfather was William Iremonger, who commanded the 2nd Regiment of Foot during the Peninsular War and fought under Wellington (as he became) at Vimiero.^[14] He was also descended from Governor Sir Robert Eden, 1st Baronet, of Maryland and, through the Calvert Family of Maryland, he was connected to the ancient Roman Catholic aristocracy of the Arundell and Howard families, some of whom were Roman Catholics like the Dukes of Norfolk and others Anglican such as the earls of Carlisle, Effingham and Suffolk. The Calverts had converted to the Established Church early in the 18th century to regain the proprietorship of Maryland. He was also descendant from the Schaffalitzky de Muckadell family of Denmark, and Bie family of Norway.^[15] Eden was once amused to learn that one of his ancestors had, like Churchill's ancestor the Duke of Marlborough, been the lover of Barbara Castlemaine.^[16]

There was speculation for many years that Eden's biological father was the politician and man of letters George Wyndham, but this is considered impossible as Wyndham was in South Africa at the time of Eden's conception.^[17] His mother was rumoured to have had an affair with Wyndham.^[9] Eden had an elder brother, John, who was killed in action in 1914,^[18] and a younger brother, Nicholas, who was killed when the battlecruiser HMS Indefatigable blew up and sank at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.^[19]

Early life

School

Eden was educated at two independent schools. The first was Sandroyd School in Cobham from 1907 to 1910, where he excelled in languages.^[20] He then started at Eton College in January 1911.^[21] There, he won a Divinity prize and excelled at cricket, rugby and rowing, winning House colours in the last.^[22]

Eden learned French and German on continental holidays, and as a child is said to have spoken French better than English.^[23] Although Eden was able to converse with Hitler in German in February 1934, and with the Chinese premier Chou En-lai in French at Geneva in 1954, he preferred, out of a sense of professionalism, to have interpreters to translate at formal meetings.^[24][25]

Although Eden later claimed to have had no interest in politics until the early 1920s, his teenage letters and diaries show him to have been obsessed with the subject. He was a strong, partisan Conservative, rejoicing in the defeat of Charles Masterman at a by-election in May 1913, and once astonishing his mother on a train journey by telling her the MP and the size of his majority for each constituency through which they passed.^[26] By 1914 he was a member of the Eton Society ("Pop").^[27]

First World War

During the Great War, Eden's elder brother, Lieutenant John Eden, was killed in action on 17 October 1914, at the age of 26, while serving with the 12th (Prince of Wales's Royal) Lancers. He is buried in Larch Wood (Railway Cutting) Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery in Belgium.^[28] His uncle Robin was later shot down and captured whilst serving with the Royal Flying Corps.^[29]

Volunteering for service the British Army, as did many others of his generation, Eden served with the 21st (Yeoman Rifles) Battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC), a Kitchener's Army unit, initially recruited mainly from County Durham country labourers, who were increasingly replaced by Londoners after losses at the Somme in mid-1916.^[29] He was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant on 2 November 1915 (antedated to 29 September 1915).^[30][31] His battalion transferred to the Western Front on 4 May 1916 as part of the 41st Division.^[29] On 31 May 1916, Eden's younger brother, Midshipman William Nicholas Eden, was killed in action, aged 16, on board HMS Indefatigable during the Battle of Jutland. He is commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial.^[32] His brother-in-law, Lord Brooke, was wounded during the war.^[29]

One summer night in 1916, near Ploegsteert, Eden had to lead a small raid into an enemy trench to kill or capture enemy soldiers, so as to identify the enemy units opposite. He and his men were pinned down in no man's land under enemy fire, his sergeant seriously wounded in the leg. Eden sent one man back to British lines to fetch another man and a stretcher, then he and three others carried the wounded sergeant back with, as he later put it in his memoirs, a "chilly feeling down our spines", unsure whether the Germans had not seen them in the dark or were chivalrously declining to fire. He omitted to mention that he had been awarded the Military Cross (MC) for the incident, something of which he had made little mention in his political career.^[33] On 18 September 1916, after the Battle of Flers-Courcelette (part of the Battle of the Somme), he wrote to his mother "I have seen things lately that I am not likely to forget".^[29] On 3 October, he was appointed an adjutant, with the rank of temporary lieutenant for the duration of that appointment.^[34] At the age of 19, he was the youngest adjutant on the Western Front.^[29]

Eden's MC was gazetted in the 1917 Birthday Honours list.^[35][36] His battalion fought at Messines Ridge in June 1917.^[29] On 1 July 1917, Eden was confirmed as a temporary lieutenant,^[37] relinquishing his appointment as adjutant three days later.^[38] His battalion fought in the first few days of Third Battle of Ypres (31 July – 4 August).^[29] Between 20 and 23 September 1917 his battalion spent a few days on coastal defence on the Franco-Belgian border.^[29]

On 19 November, he was transferred to the General Staff as a General Staff Officer Grade 3 (GSO3), with the temporary rank of captain.^[39] He served at Second Army HQ, missing out on service in Italy, as the 41st Division was in Italy, after the Italian defeat at the Battle of Caporetto, between mid-November 1917 and 8 March 1918, returning to the Western Front, the main theatre of war, as a major German offensive was clearly imminent, only for Eden's former battalion to be disbanded to help alleviate the British Army's acute manpower shortage.^[29] Although David Lloyd George, then the British Prime Minister, was one of the few politicians of whom Eden reported front-line soldiers speaking highly, he wrote to his sister (23 December 1917) in disgust at his "wait and see twaddle" in declining to extend conscription to Ireland.^[40]

In March 1918, during the German Spring Offensive, he was stationed near La Fère on the Oise—opposite Adolf Hitler, as he learned at a conference in 1935.^[29][41] At one point, when brigade HQ was bombed by German aircraft, his companion told him "There now, you have had your first taste of the next war."^[42] On 26 May 1918 he was appointed brigade major of the 198th Infantry Brigade, part of the 66th Division.^[29][40] At the age of twenty, Eden was the youngest brigade major in the British Army.^[41]

He considered standing for Parliament at the end of the war, but the general election was called too early for this to be possible.^[41] After the Armistice with Germany, he spent the winter of 1918–19 in the Ardennes with his brigade; on 28 March 1919, he transferred to be brigade major of the 99th Infantry Brigade.^[29] Eden contemplated applying for a commission in the Regular Army, but they were very hard to come by, with the army contracting so rapidly. He initially shrugged off his mother's suggestion of studying at Oxford. He also rejected the thought of becoming a barrister; his preferred career alternatives at this stage were standing for Parliament for Bishop Auckland, the Civil Service in East Africa, or the Foreign Office.^[43] He was demobilised on 13 June 1919.^[29] He retained the rank of captain.^[44][45]

Oxford

Eden had dabbled in the study of Turkish with a family friend.^[46] After the war, he studied Oriental Languages (Persian and Arabic) at Christ Church, Oxford, starting in October 1919.^[47] Persian was his main, and Arabic his secondary, language. He studied under Richard Paset Dewhurst and David Samuel Margoliouth.^[46]

At Oxford, Eden took no part in student politics, and his main leisure interest at the time was art.^[47] Eden was in the Oxford University Dramatic Society and President of the Asiatic Society. Along with Lord David Cecil and R. E. Gathorne-Hardy he founded the Uffizi Society, of which he later became President. Possibly under the influence of his father he gave a paper on Cézanne, whose work was then not yet widely appreciated.^[46] Eden was already collecting paintings.^[47]

In July 1920, whilst still an undergraduate, Eden was recalled to military service as a lieutenant in the 6th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry.^[48] In the spring of 1921, once again as a temporary captain, he commanded local defence forces at Spennymoor as serious industrial unrest seemed possible.^[49][50] He again relinquished his commission on 8 July.^[51] He graduated from Oxford in June 1922 with a Double First.^[47] He continued to serve as an officer in the Territorial Army until May 1923.^[52]

Early political career, 1922–1931

1922–1924

Captain Eden, as he was still known, was selected to contest Spennymoor, as a Conservative. At first he had hoped to win (with some Liberal support as the Conservatives were still supporting Lloyd George's coalition government) but by the time of the November 1922 general election it was clear that the surge in the Labour vote made this unlikely.^[53] His main sponsor was the Marquess of Londonderry, a local coalowner. The seat went from Liberal to Labour.^[54]

Eden's father had died on 20 February 1915.^[55] As a younger son, he had inherited capital of £7,675 and in 1922 he had a private income of £706 after tax (approximately £375,000 and £35,000 at 2014 prices).^[49][56]

Eden read the writings of Lord Curzon and was hoping to emulate him by entering politics with a view to specialising in foreign affairs.^[57] Eden married Beatrice Beckett in the autumn of 1923, and after a two-day honeymoon in Essex, he was selected to fight Warwick and Leamington for a by-election in November 1923. His Labour opponent, Daisy Greville Countess of Warwick, was by coincidence his sister Elfrida's mother-in-law and also mother to his wife's step-mother, Marjorie Blanche Eve Beckett née Greville.^[58] On 16 November 1923, during the by-election campaign, Parliament was dissolved for the December 1923 general election.^[59] He was elected to Parliament at the age of twenty-six.^[60]

The first Labour Government, under Ramsay MacDonald, took office in January 1924. Eden's maiden speech (19 February 1924) was a controversial attack on Labour's defence policy and was heckled, and thereafter he was careful to speak only after deep preparation.^[60] He later reprinted the speech in a collection called Foreign Affairs (1939) to give an impression that he had been a consistent advocate of air strength. Eden admired H. H. Asquith, then in his final year in the Commons, for his lucidity and brevity. On 1 April 1924 he spoke urging Anglo-Turkish friendship and ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne, which had been signed in July 1923.^[61]

1924–1929

The Conservatives returned to power at the 1924 General Election. In January 1925 Eden, disappointed not to have been offered a position, went on a tour of the Middle East, meeting Emir Feisal of Iraq. Feisal reminded him of the "Czar of Russia & (I) suspect that his fate may be similar" (a similar fate did indeed befall the Iraqi Royal Family in 1958). He inspected the oil refinery at Abadan, which he likened to "a Swansea on a small scale".^[62]

He was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Godfrey Locker-Lampson, Under-Secretary at the Home Office (17 February 1925) (serving under Home Secretary William Joynson Hicks).^[63] In July 1925 he went on a second trip to Canada, Australia and India.^[62] He wrote articles for The Yorkshire Post (controlled by his father-in-law Sir Gervase Beckett) under the pseudonym "Backbencher".^[61] In September 1925 he represented the Yorkshire Post at the Imperial Conference at Melbourne.^[64]

Eden continued to be PPS to Locker-Lampson when the latter was appointed Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office in December 1925.^[63] He distinguished himself with a speech on the Middle East (21 December 1925),^[65] calling for the readjustment of Iraqi frontiers in favour of Turkey, but also for a continued British mandate rather than "scuttle". Eden ended his speech by calling for Anglo-Turkish friendship. On 23 March 1926 he spoke urging the League of Nations to admit Germany, which would happen the following year.^[66] In July 1926 he became PPS to the Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain.^[67]

Besides supplementing his parliamentary income (around £300 a year at that time) by writing and journalism, in 1926 he published a book about his travels, Places in the Sun, highly critical of the detrimental effect of socialism on Australia, and to which Stanley Baldwin wrote a foreword.^[68]

In November 1928, with Austen Chamberlain away on a voyage to recover his health, Eden had to speak for the government in a debate on a recent Anglo-French naval agreement, replying to Ramsay MacDonald (then Leader of the Opposition).^[69] According to Austen Chamberlain, he would have been promoted to his first ministerial job, Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, if the Conservatives had won the 1929 election.^[70]

1929–1931

The 1929 General Election was the only time Eden received less than 50% of the vote at Warwick.^[71] After the Conservative defeat he joined a progressive group of younger politicians consisting of Oliver Stanley, William Ormsby-Gore and the future Speaker W.S. "Shakes" Morrison. Another member was Noel Skelton, who before his death coined the phrase "property-owning democracy", which Eden was later to popularise as a Conservative party aspiration. Eden advocated co-partnership in industry between managers and workers, whom he wanted to be given shares.^[70]

In opposition between 1929 and 1931 Eden worked as a City broker for Harry Lucas (a firm eventually absorbed into S. G. Warburg & Co.).^[68]

Foreign Affairs Minister, 1931–1935

In August 1931 Eden held his first ministerial office as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's National Government. Initially the office of Foreign Secretary was held by Lord Reading (in the House of Lords), although Sir John Simon held the job from November 1931.

Like many of his generation who had served in the First World War, Eden was strongly anti-war, and strove to work through the League of Nations to preserve European peace. The government proposed measures, superseding the postwar Versailles Treaty, that would allow Germany to rearm (albeit replacing her small professional army with a short-service militia) and reduce French armaments. Winston Churchill criticised the policy sharply in the House of Commons on 23 March 1933, opposing "undue" French disarmament as this might require Britain to take action to enforce peace under the 1925 Locarno Treaty.^[3][72] Eden, replying for the government, dismissed Churchill's speech as exaggerated and unconstructive, commenting that land disarmament had yet to make the same progress as naval disarmament at the Washington and London treaties, and arguing that French disarmament was needed in order to "secure for Europe that period of appeasement which is needed".^[73][74][75] Eden's speech was met with approval by the House of Commons. Neville Chamberlain commented shortly afterwards: "That young man is coming along rapidly; not only can he make a good speech but he has a good head and what advice he gives is listened to by the Cabinet" ^[76] Eden later wrote that in the early 1930s the word "appeasement" was still used in its correct sense (from the Oxford English Dictionary) of seeking to settle strife. Only later in the decade did it come to acquire a pejorative meaning of acceding to bullying demands.^[3][77]

He was appointed Lord Privy Seal in December 1933,^[78] a position that was combined with the newly created office of Minister for League of Nations Affairs. Whilst Lord Privy Seal, Eden was sworn of the Privy Council in the 1934 Birthday Honours.^[79][80] In March 1935, accompanying Sir John Simon, Eden met Hitler in Berlin and raised a weak protest after Hitler restored conscription against the Versailles Treaty. In the same month, Eden also met Stalin and Litvinov in Moscow.^[81][82]

He entered the Cabinet for the first time when Stanley Baldwin formed his third administration in June 1935. Eden later came to recognise that peace could not be maintained by appeasement of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. He privately opposed the policy of the Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, of trying to appease Italy during its invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935. When Hoare resigned after the failure of the Hoare-Laval Pact, Eden succeeded him as Foreign Secretary. When Eden had his first audience with King George V, the King is said to have remarked, "No more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris."

At this stage in his career, Eden was considered as something of a leader of fashion. He regularly wore a Homburg hat, which became known in Britain as an "Anthony Eden".

Foreign Secretary and resignation, 1935–1938

Eden became Foreign Secretary at a time when Britain was having to adjust its foreign policy to face the rise of the fascist powers. He supported the policy of non-interference in the Spanish Civil War through conferences like the Nyon Conference and supported prime minister Neville Chamberlain in his efforts to preserve peace through reasonable concessions to Germany. The Italian-Ethiopian War was brewing, and Eden tried in vain to persuade Mussolini to submit the dispute to the League of Nations. The Italian dictator scoffed at Eden publicly as "the best dressed fool in Europe." Eden did not protest when Britain and France failed to oppose Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936. When the French requested a meeting with a view to some kind of military action in response to Hitler's occupation, Eden in a statement firmly ruled out any military assistance to France.^[83]

Growing dissatisfaction with Chamberlain's policy of coming to friendly terms with Italy led to his resignation in public protest. Eden used secret intelligence reports to conclude Italy was an enemy.^[84]

Eden at this point had no complaints about the appeasement of Nazi Germany. He became a Conservative dissenter, leading a group that Conservative whip David Margesson called the "Glamour Boys". Meanwhile the leading anti-appeaser Winston Churchill, led a similar group, called "The Old Guard".^[85] They were not yet allies and did not see eye-to-eye until Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940. There was much speculation that Eden would become a rallying point for all the disparate opponents of Neville Chamberlain, but his position declined heavily amongst politicians as he maintained a low profile, avoiding confrontation, though he opposed the Munich Agreement and abstained in the vote on it in the House of Commons. However, he remained popular in the country at large, and in later years was often wrongly supposed to have resigned as Foreign Secretary in protest at the Munich Agreement and appeasement generally. In a 1967 interview, Eden explained his decision to resign: "we had an agreement with Mussolini about the Mediterranean and Spain, which he was violating by sending troops to Spain, and Chamberlain wanted to have another agreement. I thought Mussolini should honour the first one before we negotiated for the second. I was trying to fight a delaying action for Britain, and I could not go along with Chamberlain's policy."^[86]

Second World War

During the last months of peace in 1939, Eden joined the Territorial Army with the rank of major, in the London Rangers motorized battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps and was at annual camp with them in Beaulieu, Hampshire, when he heard news of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.^[87]

On the outbreak of war (3 September 1939) Eden, unlike most Territorials, did not mobilise for active service. Instead, he returned to Chamberlain's government as Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, but was not in the War Cabinet. As a result, he was not a candidate for the Premiership when Chamberlain resigned in May 1940 after the Narvik Debate and Churchill became Prime Minister.^[88] Churchill appointed Eden Secretary of State for War.

At the end of 1940 Eden returned to the Foreign Office, and in this role became a member of the executive committee of the Political Warfare Executive in 1941. Although he was one of Churchill's closest confidants, his role in wartime was restricted because Churchill conducted the most important negotiations, with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, himself, but Eden served loyally as Churchill's lieutenant.^[4] In December 1941, he travelled by ship to Russia^[89] where he met the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ^[90] and surveyed the battlefields upon which the Russians had successfully defended Moscow from the German Army attack in Operation Barbarossa.^[91][92]

Nevertheless, he was in charge of handling most of the relations between Britain and Free French leader de Gaulle during the last years of the war. Eden was often critical of the emphasis Churchill put on the Special Relationship with the United States and was often disappointed by American treatment of their British allies.^[4]

In 1942 Eden was given the additional role of Leader of the House of Commons. He was considered for various other major jobs during and after the war, including Commander-in-Chief Middle East in 1942 (this would have been a very unusual appointment as Eden was a civilian; General Harold Alexander was in fact appointed), Viceroy of India in 1943 (General Archibald Wavell was appointed to this job), or Secretary-General of the newly formed United Nations Organisation in 1945. In 1943 with the revelation of the Katyn Massacre Eden refused to help the Polish Government in Exile.^[93] Eden supported the idea of post-war expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia.^[94]

In early 1943 Eden blocked a request from the Bulgarian authorities to aid with deporting part of the Jewish population from newly acquired Bulgarian territories to British-controlled Palestine. After his refusal, some of those people were transported to German concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland.^[95]

In 1944 Eden went to Moscow to negotiate with the Soviet Union at the Tolstoy Conference. Eden also opposed the Morgenthau Plan to deindustrialise Germany. After the Stalag Luft III murders, he vowed in the House of Commons to bring the perpetrators of the crime to "exemplary justice", leading to a successful manhunt after the war by the Royal Air Force Special Investigation Branch.^[93]

Eden's eldest son, Pilot Officer Simon Gascoigne Eden, went missing in action and was later declared dead, while serving as a navigator with the RAF in Burma, in June 1945.^[96] There was a close bond between Eden and Simon, and Simon's death was a great personal shock to his father. Mrs. Eden reportedly reacted to her son's loss differently, and this led to a breakdown in the marriage. De Gaulle wrote him a personal letter of condolence in French.

In 1945 he was mentioned by Halvdan Koht among seven candidates who were qualified for the Nobel Prize in Peace. However, he did not explicitly nominate any of them. The person actually nominated was Cordell Hull.^[97]

Post-war, 1945–1955

In opposition (1945–1951)

After the Labour Party won the 1945 election, Eden went into opposition as Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party. Many felt that Churchill should have retired and allowed Eden to become party leader, but Churchill refused to consider this. As early as the spring of 1946, Eden openly asked Churchill to retire in his favour.^[98] He was in any case depressed during this period by the break-up of his first marriage and the death of his eldest son. Churchill was in many ways only "part-time Leader of the Opposition",^[4] given his many journeys abroad and his literary work, and left the day-to-day work largely to Eden. Eden was largely regarded as lacking sense of party politics and contact with the common man.^[99] In these opposition years, however, he developed some knowledge about domestic affairs and created the idea of a "property-owning-democracy", which Margaret Thatcher's government attempted to achieve decades later. His domestic agenda is overall considered centre-left.^[4]

Return to government, 1951–1955

In 1951 the Conservatives returned to office and Eden became Foreign Secretary for a third time, though not "Deputy Prime Minister" (Churchill gave him this title in the first list of ministers submitted to the King, but the King forbade it on the grounds that this "office" is unknown to the Constitution). Churchill was largely a figurehead in this government, and Eden had effective control of British foreign policy for the second time, as the Empire declined and the Cold War grew more intense.

Eden's biographer Richard Lamb said that Eden bullied Churchill into going back on commitments to European unity made in opposition. The truth appears to be more complex. Britain was still a world power, or at least trying to be, in 1945–55, with the concept of sovereignty not as discredited as on the continent. The United States encouraged moves towards European federalism as it wanted to withdraw US troops and get the Germans rearmed under supervision. Eden was less Atlanticist than Churchill and had little time for European federalism. He wanted firm alliances with France and other Western European powers to contain Germany.^[100] Half of British trade at that time was with the sterling area, and only a quarter with Western Europe. Despite later talk of "lost opportunities", even Macmillan, who had been an active member of the "European Movement" after the war, acknowledged in February 1952 that Britain's relationship with the United States and the Commonwealth would prevent her from joining a federal Europe at that time.^[101] Eden was also irritated by Churchill's hankering for a summit meeting with the USSR, during the period in 1953 after Stalin's death and whilst Eden was seriously ill from a botched bile duct operation.^[101]

Despite the ending of the British Raj in India, British interest in the Middle East remained strong: Britain had treaty relations with Jordan and Iraq and was the protecting power for Kuwait and the Trucial States, the colonial power in Aden, and the occupying power in the Suez Canal. Many right-wing Conservative MPs, organised in the so-called Suez Group, sought to retain this imperial role, though economic pressures made maintenance of it increasingly difficult. Britain did seek to maintain its huge military base in the Suez Canal zone and, in the face of Egyptian resentment, further develop its alliance with Iraq, and the hope was that the Americans would assist Britain, possibly through finance. While the Americans did co-operate with the British in overthrowing the Mosaddegh government in Iran, after it had nationalised British oil interests, the Americans developed their own relations in the region, taking a positive view of the Egyptian Free Officers and developing friendly relations with Saudi Arabia. Britain was eventually forced to withdraw from the canal zone and the Baghdad Pact security treaty was not supported by the United States, leaving Eden vulnerable to the charge of having failed to maintain British prestige.^[102]

Eden had grave misgivings about American foreign policy under Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower was concerned, as early as March 1953, at the escalating costs of defence and the increase of state power which this would bring.^[103] Eden was irked by Dulles's policy of "brinkmanship", or display of muscle, in relations with the Communist world. The success of the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina ranks as the outstanding achievement of his third term in the Foreign Office, although he was critical of the United States decision not to sign the accord. During the summer and fall of 1954, the Anglo-Egyptian agreement to withdraw all British forces from Egypt was also negotiated and ratified.

There were concerns that if the EDC was not ratified as they wanted, the Republican administration in the United States might withdraw into defending only the Western Hemisphere (although recent documentary evidence confirms that the US intended to withdraw troops from Europe anyway if the EDC was ratified).^[103] After the French Assembly rejected the EDC in September 1954, Eden tried to come up with a viable alternative. Between 11 and 17 September he visited every major West European capital, to negotiate West Germany becoming a sovereign state and entering the Brussels pact prior to entering NATO. Paul-Henri Spaak said he "saved the Atlantic alliance".^[104]

In 1954 he was appointed to the Order of the Garter^[105] and became Sir Anthony Eden.

Prime Minister, 1955–1957

In April 1955 Churchill finally retired, and Eden succeeded him as Prime Minister. He was a very popular figure as a result of his long wartime service and his famous good looks and charm. His famous words "Peace comes first, always" added to his already substantial popularity.

On taking office, he immediately called a general election for 26 May 1955, at which he increased the Conservative majority from seventeen to sixty, an increase in majority that broke a ninety-year record for any UK government. The 1955 general election was the last in which the Conservatives won the majority share of the votes in Scotland. However, Eden had never held a domestic portfolio and had little experience in economic matters. He left these areas to his lieutenants such as Rab Butler, and concentrated largely on foreign policy, forming a close relationship with US President Dwight Eisenhower. Eden's attempts to maintain overall control of the Foreign Office drew widespread criticism.

Eden has the distinction of being the British prime minister to oversee the lowest unemployment figures of the post-World War II era, with unemployment standing at just over 215,000—barely one per cent of the workforce—in July 1955.^[106]

Suez (1956)

The alliance with the US proved not universal, however, when in July 1956 Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt, nationalised the Suez Canal, following the withdrawal of Anglo-American funding for the Aswan Dam. Eden believed the nationalisation was in violation of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1954 that Nasser had signed with the British and French governments on 19 October 1954. This view was shared by Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell and Liberal leader Jo Grimond.^[107] In 1956 the Suez Canal was of vital importance since over two-thirds of the oil supplies of Western Europe (60 million tons annually) passed through it, with 15,000 ships a year, one-third of them British; three-quarters of all Canal shipping belonged to NATO countries. Britain's total oil reserve at the time of the nationalisation was enough for only six weeks.^[108] The Soviet Union was certain to veto any sanctions against Nasser at the United Nations. Britain and a conference of other nations met in London following the nationalisation in an attempt to resolve the crisis through diplomatic means. However, the Eighteen Nations Proposals, including an offer of Egyptian representation on the board of the Suez Canal Company and a share of profits, were rejected by Nasser.^[109] Eden feared that Nasser intended to form an Arab Alliance that would threaten to cut off oil supplies to Europe and, in conjunction with France, decided he should be removed from power.^[110]

Eden, drawing on his experience in the 1930s, saw Nasser as another Mussolini, considering the two men aggressive nationalist socialists determined to invade other countries. Others believed that Nasser was acting from legitimate patriotic concerns and the nationalisation was determined by the Foreign Office to be deliberately provocative but not illegal. The Attorney General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, was not asked for his opinion officially but made his view that the government's contemplated armed strike against Egypt would be unlawful known through the Lord Chancellor.^[111]

Anthony Nutting recalled that Eden told him, "What's all this nonsense about isolating Nasser or 'neutralising' him as you call it? I want him destroyed, can't you understand? I want him murdered, and if you and the Foreign Office don't agree, then you'd better come to the cabinet and explain why." When Nutting pointed out that they had no alternative government to replace Nasser, Eden apparently replied, "I don't give a damn if there's anarchy and chaos in Egypt."^[112] At a private meeting at Downing Street on 16 October 1956 Eden showed several ministers a plan, submitted two days earlier by the French. Israel would invade Egypt, Britain and France would give an ultimatum telling both sides to stop and, when one refused, send in forces to enforce the ultimatum, separate the two sides – and occupy the Canal and get rid of Nasser. When Nutting suggested the Americans should be consulted Eden replied, "I will not bring the Americans into this ... Dulles has done enough damage as it is. This has nothing to do with the Americans. We and the French must decide what to do and we alone."^[113] Eden openly admitted his view of the crisis was shaped by his experiences in the two world wars, writing, "We are all marked to some extent by the stamp of our generation, mine is that of the assassination in Sarajevo and all that flowed from it. It is impossible to read the record now and not feel that we had a responsibility for always being a lap behind ... Always a lap behind, a fatal lap."^[114]

There was no question of an immediate military response to the crisis – Cyprus had no deep-water harbours, which meant that Malta, several days' sailing from Egypt, would have to be the main concentration point for an invasion fleet if the Libyan government would not permit a land invasion from its territory.^[108] Eden initially considered using British forces in the Kingdom of Libya to regain the Canal, but then decided this risked inflaming Arab opinion.^[115] Unlike the French prime minister Guy Mollet, who saw regaining the Canal as the primary objective, Eden believed the real need was to remove Nasser from office. He hoped that if the Egyptian army was swiftly and humiliatingly defeated by the Anglo-French forces the Egyptian people would rise up against Nasser. Eden told Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery that the overall aim of the mission was simply, "To knock Nasser off his perch."^[116] In the absence of a popular uprising Eden and Mollet would say that Egyptian forces were incapable of defending their country and therefore Anglo-French forces would have to return to guard the Suez Canal.

Eden believed that if Nasser were seen to get away with seizing the Canal then Egypt and other Arab countries might move closer to the Soviet Union. At that time, the Middle East accounted for 80–90 percent of Western Europe's oil supply. If Nasser were seen to get away with it, then other Middle East countries might be encouraged to nationalise their oil. The invasion, he contended at the time, and again in a 1967 interview, was aimed at maintaining the sanctity of international agreements and at preventing future unilateral denunciation of treaties.^[86] Eden was energetic during the crisis in using the media, including the BBC, to incite public opinion to support his views of the need to overthrow Nasser.^[117] In September 1956 a plan was drawn up to reduce the flow of water in the Nile by using dams in an attempt to damage Nasser's position. However, the plan was abandoned because it would take months to implement, and due to fears that it could affect other countries such as Uganda and Kenya.^[118]

On 25 September 1956, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan met informally with President Eisenhower at the White House; he misread Eisenhower's determination to avoid war and told Eden that the Americans would not in any way oppose the attempt to topple Nasser.^[119] Though Eden had known Eisenhower for years and had many direct contacts during the crisis, he also misread the situation. The Americans saw themselves as the champion of decolonization and refused to support any move that could be seen as imperialism or colonialism. Eisenhower felt the crisis had to be handled peacefully; he told Eden that American public opinion would not support a military solution. Eden and other leading British officials incorrectly believed Nasser's support for Palestinian terrorists against Israel, as well as his attempts to destabilise pro-western regimes in Iraq and other Arab states, would deter the US from intervening with the operation. Eisenhower specifically warned that the Americans, and the world, "would be outraged" unless all peaceful routes had been exhausted, and even then "the eventual price might become far too heavy".^[120][121] At the root of the problem was the fact that Eden felt that Britain was still an independent world power. His lack of sympathy for British integration into Europe, manifested in his scepticism about the fledgling European Economic Community (EEC), was another aspect of his belief in Britain's independent role in world affairs.

Israel invaded the Sinai peninsula at the end of October 1956. Britain and France moved in ostensibly to separate the two sides and bring peace, but in fact to regain control of the canal and overthrow Nasser. The United States immediately and strongly opposed the invasion. The United Nations denounced the invasion, the Soviets were bellicose, and only New Zealand, Australia, West Germany and South Africa spoke out for Britain's position.^[122][123]

The Suez Canal was of lesser economic importance to the USA, which acquired 15 percent of its oil through that route. Eisenhower wanted to broker international peace in "fragile" regions. He did not see Nasser as a serious threat to the West, but he was concerned that the Soviets, who were well known to want a permanent warm water base for their Black Sea fleet in the Mediterranean, might side with Egypt. Eisenhower feared a pro-Soviet backlash amongst the Arab nations if, as seemed likely, Egypt suffered an humiliating defeat at the hands of the British, French and Israelis.^[124]

Eden, who faced domestic pressure from his party to take action, as well as stopping the decline of British influence in the Middle East,^[4] had ignored Britain's financial dependence on the US in the wake of the Second World War, and had assumed the US would automatically endorse whatever action taken by its closest ally. At the 'Law not War' rally in Trafalgar Square on 4 November 1956, Eden was ridiculed by Aneurin Bevan: 'Sir Anthony Eden has been pretending that he is now invading Egypt to strengthen the United Nations. Every burglar of course could say the same thing; he could argue that he was entering the house to train the police. So, if Sir Anthony Eden is sincere in what he is saying, and he may be, then he is too stupid to be a prime minister'. Public opinion was mixed; some historians think that the majority of public opinion in the UK was on Eden's side.^[125] Eden was forced to bow to American diplomatic and financial pressure, and protests at home, by calling a ceasefire when Anglo-French forces had captured only 23 miles of the Canal. With the US threatening to withdraw financial support from sterling, the Cabinet divided and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan threatening to resign unless an immediate ceasefire was called, Eden was under immense pressure. He considered defying the calls until the commander on the ground told him it could take up to six days for the Anglo-French troops to secure the entire Canal zone. Therefore, a ceasefire was called at quarter past midnight on 7 November.

In his 1987 book Spycatcher Peter Wright said that, following the imposed ending to the military operation, Eden reactivated the assassination option for a second time. By this time virtually all MI6 agents in Egypt had been rounded up by Nasser, and a new operation, using renegade Egyptian officers, was drawn up. It failed principally because the cache of weapons which had been hidden on the outskirts of Cairo was found to be defective.^[126]

Suez badly damaged Eden's reputation for statesmanship, and led to a breakdown in his health. He went on vacation to Jamaica in November 1956, at a time when he was still determined to soldier on as Prime Minister. His health, however, did not improve, and during his absence from London his Chancellor Harold Macmillan and Rab Butler worked to manoeuvre him out of office. On the morning of the ceasefire Eisenhower agreed to meet with Eden to publicly resolve their differences, but this offer was later withdrawn after Secretary of State Dulles advised that it could inflame the Middle Eastern situation further.^[127]

The Observer newspaper accused Eden of lying to Parliament over the Suez Crisis, while MPs from all parties criticised his calling a ceasefire before the Canal was taken. Churchill, while publicly supportive of Eden's actions, privately criticised his successor for not seeing the military operation through to its conclusion. Eden easily survived a vote of confidence in the House of Commons on 8 November.^[127]

1957 resignation

While Eden was on holiday in Jamaica, other members of the government discussed on 20 November how to counter charges that the UK and France had worked in collusion with Israel to seize the Canal, but decided there was very little evidence in the public domain.^[128]

On his return from Jamaica on 14 December, Eden still hoped to continue as Prime Minister. He had lost his traditional base of support on the Tory left and amongst moderate opinion nationally, but appears to have hoped to rebuild a new base of support amongst the Tory Right.^[129] However, his political position had eroded during his absence. He wished to make a statement attacking Nasser as a puppet of the Soviets, attacking the United Nations and speaking of the "lessons of the 1930s", but was prevented from doing so by Macmillan, Butler and Lord Salisbury.^[130]

On his return to the House of Commons (17 December), he slipped into the Chamber largely unacknowledged by his own party. One Conservative MP rose to wave his Order Paper, only to have to sit down in embarrassment whilst Labour MPs laughed.^[131] On 18 December he addressed the 1922 committee (Conservative backbenchers), declaring "as long as I live, I shall never apologise for what we did", but was unable to answer a question about the validity of the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 (which he had in fact reaffirmed in April 1955, two days before becoming Prime Minister).^[129] In his final statement to the House of Commons as Prime Minister (20 December 1956) he performed well in a difficult debate, but told MPs that "there was not foreknowledge that Israel would attack Egypt". Victor Rothwell writes that the knowledge of his having misled the House of Commons in this way must have hung over him thereafter, as was the concern that the US Administration might demand that Britain pay reparations to Egypt.^[129] Papers released in January 1987 showed the entire Cabinet had been informed of the plan on 23 October 1956.^[115]

Eden suffered another fever at Chequers over Christmas, but was still talking of going on an official trip to the USSR in April 1957, wanting a full inquiry into the Crabb affair and badgering Lord Hailsham (First Lord of the Admiralty) about the £6m being spent on oil storage at Malta.^[129]

Eden resigned on 9 January 1957, after his doctors warned him his life was at stake if he continued in office.^[132] John Charmley writes "Ill-health ... provide(d) a dignified reason for an action (i.e.. resignation) which would, in any event, have been necessary."^[133] Rothwell writes that "mystery persists" over exactly how Eden was persuaded to resign, although the limited evidence suggests that Butler, who was expected to succeed him as Prime Minister, was at the centre of the intrigue. Rothwell writes that Eden's fevers were "nasty but brief and not life-threatening" and that there may have been "manipulation of medical evidence" to make Eden's health seem "even worse" than it was. Macmillan wrote in his diary that "nature had provided a real health reason" when a "diplomatic illness" might otherwise have had to be invented. David Carlton (1981) even suggested that the Palace might have been involved, a suggestion discussed by Rothwell. As early as spring 1954 Eden had been indifferent to cultivating good relations with the new Queen. Eden is known to have favoured a Japanese or Scandinavian style monarchy (i.e. with no involvement in politics whatsoever) and in January 1956 he had insisted that Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin spend only the minimum amount of time in talks with the Queen. Evidence also exists that the Palace were concerned at not being kept fully informed during the Suez Crisis. In the 1960s Clarissa Eden was observed to speak of the Queen "in an extremely hostile and belittling way", and in an interview in 1976 Eden commented that he "would not claim she was pro-Suez".^[134]

Although the media expected Butler would get the nod as Eden's successor, a survey of the Cabinet taken for the Queen showed Macmillan was the nearly unanimous choice, and he became Prime Minister on 10 January 1957.^[135] Shortly afterwards Eden and his wife left England for a holiday in New Zealand.

Suez in retrospect

A. J. P. Taylor wrote in the 1970s: "Eden … destroyed (his reputation as a peacemaker) and led Great Britain to one of the greatest humiliations in her history … (he) seemed to take on a new personality. He acted impatiently and on impulse. Previously flexible he now relied on dogma, denouncing Nasser as a second Hitler. Though he claimed to be upholding international law, he in fact disregarded the United Nations Organisation which he had helped to create. … The outcome was pathetic rather than tragic".^[136]

Biographer D.R. Thorpe says Eden's four goals were to secure the canal; to make sure it remained open and that oil shipments would continue; to depose Nasser; and to prevent the USSR from gaining influence. "The immediate consequence of the crisis was that the Suez Canal was blocked, oil supplies were interrupted, Nasser's position as the leader of Arab nationalism was strengthened, and the way was left open for Russian intrusion into the Middle East.^[137][138]

Michael Foot pushed for a special inquiry along the lines of the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Attack on the Dardanelles in the First World War, although Harold Wilson (Labour Prime Minister 1964–70 and 1974–76) regarded the matter as a can of worms best left unopened. This talk ceased after the defeat of the Arab armies by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967, after which Eden received a lot of fanmail telling him that he had been right, and his reputation, not least in Israel and the United States, soared.^[108][139] In 1986 Eden's official biographer Robert Rhodes James re-evaluated sympathetically Eden's stance over Suez^[140] and in 1990, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, James asked: "Who can now claim that Eden was wrong?".^[141] Such arguments turn mostly on whether, as a matter of policy, the Suez operation was fundamentally flawed or whether, as such "revisionists" thought, the lack of American support conveyed the impression that the West was divided and weak. Anthony Nutting, who resigned as a Foreign Office Minister over Suez, expressed the former view in 1967, the year of the Arab–Israeli Six-Day War, when he wrote that "we had sown the wind of bitterness and we were to reap the whirlwind of revenge and rebellion".^[142] Conversely, Jonathan Pearson argues in Sir Anthony Eden and the Suez Crisis: Reluctant Gamble (2002) that Eden was more reluctant and less bellicose than most historians have judged. D. R. Thorpe, another of Eden's biographers, writes that Suez was "a truly tragic end to his premiership, and one that came to assume a disproportionate importance in any assessment of his careers"; he suggests that had the Suez venture succeeded, "there would almost certainly have been no Middle East war in 1967, and probably no Yom Kippur War in 1973 also".^[143]

Guy Millard, one of Eden's Private Secretaries, who thirty years later, in a radio interview, spoke publicly for the first time on the crisis, made an insider's judgement about Eden: "It was his mistake of course and a tragic and disastrous mistake for him. I think he overestimated the importance of Nasser, Egypt, the Canal, even of the Middle East itself."^[115] While British actions in 1956 are routinely described as "imperialistic", the motivation was in fact economic. Eden was a liberal supporter of nationalist ambitions, such as over Sudanese independence. His 1954 Suez Canal Base Agreement (withdrawing British troops from Suez in return for certain guarantees) was sold to the Conservative Party against Churchill's wishes.^[144]

Rothwell believes that Eden should have cancelled the Suez Invasion plans in mid-October, when the Anglo-French negotiations at the United Nations were making some headway, and that in 1956 the Arab countries threw away a chance to make peace with Israel on her existing borders.^[145]

Britain–France rejected plan for union

British Government cabinet papers from September 1956, during Eden's term as Prime Minister, have shown that French Prime Minister Guy Mollet approached the British Government suggesting the idea of an economic and political union between France and Great Britain.^[146] This was a similar offer, in reverse, to that made by Churchill (drawing on a plan devised by Leo Amery^[147]) in June 1940.^[148]

The offer by Guy Mollet was referred to by Sir John Colville, Churchill's former private secretary, in his collected diaries, The Fringes of Power (1985), his having gleaned the information in 1957 from Air Chief Marshal Sir William Dickson during an air flight (and, according to Colville, after several whiskies and soda).^[149] Mollet's request for Union with Britain was rejected by Eden, but the additional possibility of France joining the Commonwealth of Nations was considered, although similarly rejected. Colville noted, in respect of Suez, that Eden and his Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd "felt still more beholden to the French on account of this offer".^[149]

Retirement

Eden also resigned from the House of Commons when he stood down as Prime Minister.^[150] Eden kept in touch with Lord Salisbury, agreeing with him that Macmillan had been the better choice as Prime Minister, but sympathising with his resignation over Macmillan's Cyprus policy. Despite a series of letters in which Macmillan almost begged him for a personal endorsement prior to the 1959 election, Eden only issued a declaration of support for the Conservative Government.^[151] Eden retained much of his personal popularity in Britain and contemplated returning to Parliament. Several Conservative MPs were reportedly willing to give up their seats for him, although the party hierarchy were less keen. He finally gave up such hopes in late 1960 after an exhausting speaking tour of Yorkshire.^[150] Macmillan initially offered to recommend him for a viscountcy, which Eden assumed to be a calculated insult, and he was granted an earldom (which was then the traditional rank for a former Prime Minister) after reminding Macmillan that he had already been offered one by the Queen herself.^[151] He entered the House of Lords as the Earl of Avon in 1961.^[152]

In retirement Eden lived in 'Rose Bower' by the banks of the River Ebble in Broad Chalke, Wiltshire. Starting in 1961 he bred a herd of sixty Herefordshire cattle (one of whom was called "Churchill") until a further decline in his health forced him to sell them in 1975.^[153]

In July 1962 Eden made front-page news by commenting that "Mr Selwyn Lloyd has been horribly treated" when the latter was dismissed as Chancellor in the reshuffle known as the "Night of the Long Knives". In August 1962, at a dinner party, he had a "slanging match" with Nigel Birch, who as Secretary of State for Air had not wholeheartedly supported the Suez Invasion.^[154] In 1963 Eden initially favoured Hailsham for the Conservative leadership but then supported Home as a compromise candidate.^[155]

From 1945 to 1973, Eden was Chancellor of the University of Birmingham. In a television interview in 1966 he called on the United States to halt its bombing of North Vietnam to concentrate on developing a peace plan "that might conceivably be acceptable to Hanoi." The bombing of North Vietnam, he argued, would never settle the conflict in South Vietnam. "On the contrary," he declared, "bombing creates a sort of David and Goliath complex in any country that has to suffer—as we had to, and as I suspect the Germans had to, in the last war."^[86] Eden sat for extensive interviews for the famed multi-part Thames Television production, The World at War, which was first broadcast in 1973. He also featured frequently in Marcel Ophüls' 1969 documentary Le chagrin et la pitié, discussing the occupation of France in a wider geopolitical context. He spoke impeccable, if accented, French.^[156]

Eden's occasional articles and his early 1970s television appearance were an exception to an almost total retirement.^[157] He seldom appeared in public, unlike other former Prime Ministers, e.g. James Callaghan who commented frequently on current affairs.^[158] He was even accidentally omitted from a list of Conservative Prime Ministers by Margaret Thatcher when she became Conservative Leader in 1975, although she later went out of her way to establish relations with Eden and, later, his widow.^[158] In retirement he was highly critical of regimes such as Sukarno's Indonesia which confiscated assets belonging to their former colonial rulers, and appears to have reverted somewhat to the right-wing views which he had espoused in the 1920s.^[159]

Memoirs

In retirement Eden corresponded with Selwyn Lloyd, coordinating the release of information and with which writers they would agree to speak and when. Rumours that Britain had colluded with France and Israel appeared, albeit in garbled form, as early as 1957. By the 1970s they had agreed that Lloyd would only tell his version of the story after Eden's death (in the event, Lloyd would outlive Eden by a year, struggling with terminal illness to complete his own memoirs).^[160]

In retirement Eden was particularly bitter that Eisenhower had initially indicated British and French troops should be allowed to remain around Port Said, only for the US ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr to press for an immediate withdrawal at the UN, thereby rendering the operation a complete failure. Eden felt the Eisenhower administration's unexpected opposition was hypocritical in light of the 1953 Iranian coup d'état and the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état.

Eden published three volumes of political memoirs, in which he denied that there had been any collusion with France and Israel. Like Churchill, Eden relied heavily on the ghost-writing of young researchers, whose drafts he would sometimes toss angrily into the flowerbeds outside his study. One of them was the young David Dilks.^[155]

In his view, American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, whom he particularly disliked, was responsible for the ill fate of the Suez adventure. In an October press conference, barely three weeks before the fighting began, Dulles had coupled the Suez Canal issue with colonialism, and his statement infuriated Eden and much of the UK as well. "The dispute over Nasser's seizure of the canal," wrote Eden, "had, of course, nothing to do with colonialism, but was concerned with international rights." He added that "if the United States had to defend her treaty rights in the Panama Canal, she would not regard such action as colonialism."^[161] His lack of candour further diminished his standing and a principal concern in his later years was trying to rebuild his reputation that was severely damaged by Suez, sometimes taking legal action to protect his viewpoint.^[4]

Eden faulted the United States for forcing him to withdraw, but he took credit for United Nations action in patrolling the Israeli-Egyptian borders. Eden said of the invasion, "Peace at any price has never averted war. We must not repeat the mistakes of the pre-war years, by behaving as though the enemies of peace and order are armed with only good intentions." Recalling the incident in a 1967 interview, he declared, "I am still unrepentant about Suez. People never look at what would have happened if we had done nothing. There is a parallel with the 1930s. If you allow people to break agreements with impunity, the appetite grows to feed on such things. I don't see what other we ought to have done. One cannot dodge. It is hard to act rather than dodge."^[86] In his 1967 interview (which he stipulated would not be used until after his death), Eden acknowledged secret dealings with the French and "intimations" of the Israeli attack. He insisted, however, that "the joint enterprise and the preparations for it were justified in the light of the wrongs it [the Anglo-French invasion] was designed to prevent." "I have no apologies to offer," Eden declared.^[86]

At the time of his retirement, Eden had been short of money, although he was paid a £100,000 advance for his memoirs by The Times, with any profit over this amount to be split between himself and the newspaper. By 1970, they had brought him £185,000 (around £3,000,000 at 2014 prices), leaving him a wealthy man for the first time in his life. Towards the end of his life, he published a personal memoir of his early life, Another World (1976).^[56][162]

Personal life

Relationships

On 5 November 1923, shortly before his election to Parliament, he married Beatrice Beckett, who was then eighteen.^[163] They had three sons: Simon Gascoigne (1924–1945), Robert, who died fifteen minutes after being born in October 1928, and Nicholas (1930–1985).^[164]

The marriage was not a success, with both parties apparently conducting affairs. By the mid-1930s his diaries seldom mention Beatrice.^[165] The marriage finally broke up under the strain of the loss of their son Simon, who was killed in action with the RAF in Burma in 1945. His plane was reported "missing in action" on 23 June and found on 16 July; Eden did not want the news to be public until after the election result on 26 July, to avoid claims of "making political capital" from it.^[166]

Between 1946 and 1950, whilst separated from his wife, Eden conducted an open affair with Dorothy, Countess Beatty, the wife of David, Earl Beatty. ^[167]

Eden was the great-great-grandnephew of author Emily Eden and in 1947, wrote an introduction to her novel The Semi-Attached Couple (1860).^[168]

In 1950, Eden and Beatrice were finally divorced, and in 1952, he married Churchill's niece Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, a nominal Roman Catholic who was fiercely criticised by Catholic writer Evelyn Waugh for marrying a divorced man. Eden's second marriage was much more successful than his first had been.

Problems with health

Eden had an ulcer, exacerbated by overwork, as early as the 1920s.^[169] His life was changed by a medical mishap: during an operation on 12 April 1953, to remove gallstones, his bile duct was damaged, leaving Eden susceptible to recurrent infections, biliary obstruction, and liver failure. The physician consulted at the time was the royal physician, Sir Horace Evans, 1st Baron Evans. Three surgeons were recommended and Eden chose the one that had previously performed his appendectomy, John Basil Hume, surgeon from St Bartholomew's Hospital.^[170] Eden suffered from cholangitis, an abdominal infection which became so agonising that he was admitted to hospital in 1956 with a temperature reaching 106 °F (41 °C). He required major surgery on three or four occasions to alleviate the problem.^[171]

He was also prescribed Benzedrine, the wonder drug of the 1950s. Regarded then as a harmless stimulant, it belongs to the family of drugs called amphetamines, and at that time they were prescribed and used in a very casual way. Among the side effects of Benzedrine are insomnia, restlessness, and mood swings, all of which Eden suffered during the Suez Crisis; indeed, earlier in his premiership he complained of being kept awake at night by the sound of motor scooters.^[172] Eden's drug use is now commonly agreed to have been a part of the reason for his bad judgment while Prime Minister.^[4] The Thorpe biography, however, denied Eden's abuse of Benzedrine, stating that the allegations were "untrue, as is made clear by Eden's medical records at Birmingham University, not yet [at the time] available for research".^[9]

The resignation document written by Eden for release to the Cabinet on 9 January 1957 admitted his dependence on stimulants but not that they affected his judgement during the Suez crisis in the autumn of 1956. "... I have been obliged to increase the drugs [taken after the "bad abdominal operations"] considerably and also increase the stimulants necessary to counteract the drugs. This has finally had an adverse effect on my precarious inside," he wrote. However, in his book The Suez Affair (1966), historian Hugh Thomas, quoted by David Owen, CH, PC, FRCP, claimed that Eden had revealed to a colleague that he was "practically living on Benzedrine" at the time.^[173]

Final illness and death

In December 1976, Eden felt well enough to travel with his wife to the United States to spend Christmas and New Year with Averell and Pamela Harriman, but after reaching the States his health rapidly deteriorated. Prime Minister James Callaghan arranged for an RAF plane that was already in America to divert to Miami, to fly Eden home.^[174]

Eden died from liver cancer in Salisbury on 14 January 1977, aged 79. He was survived by Clarissa.^[175]

He was buried in St Mary's churchyard at Alvediston, just three miles upstream from 'Rose Bower', at the source of the River Ebble. Eden's papers are housed at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.^[176]

At his death, Eden was the last surviving member of Churchill's War Cabinet. Eden's surviving son, Nicholas Eden, 2nd Earl of Avon (1930–1985), known as Viscount Eden from 1961 to 1977, was also a politician and a minister in the Thatcher government until his premature death from AIDS at the age of 54.^[177]

Styles of address

• 1897–1916: Mr Anthony Eden
• 1916–1923: Mr Anthony Eden MC
• 1923–1934: Mr Anthony Eden MC MP
• 1934–1954: The Rt Hon Anthony Eden MC MP
• 1954–1957: The Rt Hon Sir Anthony Eden KG MC MP
• 1957–1961: The Rt Hon Sir Anthony Eden KG MC
• 1961–1977: The Rt Hon The Earl of Avon KG MC PC

Character, speaking style and assessments

Eden, who was well-mannered, well-groomed, and good-looking, always made a particularly cultured appearance. This gave him huge popular support throughout his political life, but some contemporaries felt he was merely a superficial person lacking any deeper convictions.

That view was enforced by his very pragmatic approach to politics. Sir Oswald Mosley, for example, said he never understood why Eden was so strongly pushed by the Tory party, as he felt that Eden's abilities were very much inferior to those of Harold Macmillan and Oliver Stanley.^[178] In 1947, Dick Crossman called Eden "that peculiarly British type, the idealist without conviction".^[179]

US Secretary of State Dean Acheson regarded Eden as a quite old-fashioned amateur in politics typical of the British Establishment.^[4] In contrast, Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev commented that until his Suez adventure Eden had been "in the top world class".^[180]

Eden was heavily influenced by Stanley Baldwin when he first entered Parliament. After earlier combative beginnings, he cultivated a low-key speaking style which relied heavily on rational argument and consensus-building rather than rhetoric and party point-scoring, and which was often highly effective in the House of Commons.^[181] However, he was not always an effective public speaker, and his parliamentary performances sometimes disappointed many of his followers, e.g., after Eden's resignation from Chamberlain's government. Churchill once even commented on one of Eden's speeches that the latter had used every cliché except "God is love".^[99] This was deliberate: Eden often struck out original phrases from speech drafts and replaced them with clichés.^[182]

Eden's inability to express himself clearly is often attributed to shyness and lack of self-confidence. Eden is known to have been much more direct in meeting with his secretaries and advisers than in Cabinet meetings and public speeches, and sometimes tended to become enraged and behave "like a child",^[183] only to regain his temper within a few minutes.^[4] Many who worked for him remarked that he was "two men", one charming, erudite, and hard-working, the other petty and prone to temper tantrums during which he would insult his subordinates.^[184]

As Prime Minister, Eden was notorious for telephoning ministers and newspaper editors from 6 am onwards. Rothwell writes that even before Suez, the telephone had become "a drug" and that "During the Suez Crisis Eden's telephone mania exceeded all bounds".^[185]

Eden was notoriously "unclubbable" and offended Churchill by declining to join The Other Club. He also declined honorary membership in the Athenaeum.^[165] However, he maintained friendly relations with Opposition MPs; for example, George Thomas received a kind two-page letter from Eden on learning that his stepfather had died.^[186] Eden was a Trustee of the National Gallery (in succession to MacDonald) between 1935 and 1949. He also had a deep knowledge of Persian poetry and of Shakespeare and would bond with anybody who could display similar knowledge.^[187]

Rothwell writes that although Eden was capable of acting with ruthlessness, for instance, over the repatriation of the Cossacks in 1945, his main concern was to avoid being seen as "an appeaser" or over the Soviet reluctance to accept a democratic Poland in October 1944. Like many people, Eden persuaded himself that his past actions were more consistent than they had in fact been.^[188]

Recent biographies put more emphasis on Eden's achievements in foreign policy and perceive him to have held deep convictions regarding world peace and security as well as a strong social conscience.^[8] Rhodes James applies to Eden Churchill's famous verdict on Lord Curzon (in Great Contemporaries): "The morning had been golden; the noontime was bronze; and the evening lead. But all was solid, and each was polished until it shone after its fashion".^[189]

Ancestry

Ancestors of Anthony Eden

16. Sir Robert Eden, 1st Baronet of Maryland 8. Sir Frederick Morton Eden, 2nd Baronet of Maryland 17. Hon. Caroline Calvert 4. Sir William Eden, 6th Baronet of West Auckland and 4th Baronet of Maryland 18. Joshua Paul Smith 9. Anne Smith 2. Sir William Eden, 7th Baronet of West Auckland and 5th Baronet of Maryland 20. Joshua Iremonger 10. Lt.-Col. William Iremonger 21. Anne Dussaux 5. Elfrieda Susanna Harriet Iremonger 22. Rhys Thomas 11. Pennant Thomas 23. Margaret Lloyd 1. Robert Anthony Eden 24. Charles Grey, 1st Earl Grey 12. Rt. Rev. Hon. Edward Grey 25. Elizabeth Grey 6. Sir William Grey 26. James Woodcock (later Croft) 13. Charlotte Elizabeth Croft 27. Elizabeth Charlotte Croft 3. Sibyl Frances Grey 14. Trevor Chicheley Plowden 7. Georgina Chicheley Plowden 30. Aquarius Wilhelm, Friherre Schaffalitzky de Muckadell 15. Frances Wilhelmine Schaffalitzky de Muckadell 31. Francis Ranken

Memoirs

• Another World. London. Doubleday, 1976. Covers early life.
• The Eden Memoirs: Facing the Dictators. London. Casell, 1962. Covers early career and first period as Foreign Secretary, to 1938.
• The Eden Memoirs: the Reckoning. London. Casell, 1965. Covers 1938–1945.
• The Eden Memoirs: Full Circle. London. Casell, 1960. Covers postwar career.

References

1. ^ As Territorial, pre-outbreak of World War II.
2. ^ Robert Mallett, "The Anglo‐Italian war trade negotiations, contraband control and the failure to appease Mussolini, 1939–40." Diplomacy and Statecraft 8.1 (1997): 137–167.
3. ^ ^{a b c} Churchill 1948
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} David Dutton: Anthony Eden. A Life and Reputation (London, Arnold, 1997).
5. ^ Tony Shaw, Eden, Suez & the Mass Media: Propaganda & Persuasion during the Suez Crisis (1996)
6. ^ Keith Layborn (2002). Fifty Key Figures in Twentieth Century British Politics. Routledge. p. 102.
7. ^ "Churchill 'greatest PM of 20th Century'". bbc.co.uk.
8. ^ ^{a b} Robert Rhodes James (1986) Anthony Eden; D.R. Thorpe (2003) Eden
9. ^ ^{a b c d} Thorpe (2003) Eden
10. ^ Aster 1976, p. 2
11. ^ ^{a b} Rhodes James 1986, pp 9–14
12. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p6
13. ^ John Charmley (1989) Chamberlain and the Lost Peace
14. ^ Antiques Trade Gazette, 26 November 2011 at page 45
15. ^ Ole Feldbæk, Ole Justesen, Svend Ellehøj, Kolonierne i Asien og Afrika, 1980, p. 171
16. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p3
17. ^ D. R. Thorpe, Eden, (Robert) Anthony, first earl of Avon (1897–1977)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2011
18. ^ "Casualty Details". CWGC. 1914. Retrieved 29 April 2011.
19. ^ "Casualty Details". CWGC. 1916. Retrieved 29 April 2011.
20. ^ Thorpe (2003), pp. 48–49
21. ^ Aster 1976, p. 4
22. ^ Alan Campbell-Johanson, Eden: The Making of a Statesman, Read Books, 2007, p. 9 ISBN 978-1-4067-6451-2
23. ^ Aster 1976, p. 3
24. ^ Thorpe 2003, p46
25. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p136
26. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p26
27. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p27 ("Pop" is a self-selecting social club of senior Eton boys, who are permitted to wear coloured waistcoats)
28. ^ https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/488339/eden,-john/
29. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n} Aster 1976, pp. 5–8
30. ^ "No. 29376". The London Gazette (Supplement). 19 November 1915. p. 11579.
31. ^ "No. 29426". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 1915. p. 124.
32. ^ https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/2865847/eden,-william-nicholas/
33. ^ Rhodes James 1986, pp.43–4
34. ^ "No. 29911". The London Gazette. 19 January 1917. p. 823.
35. ^ "No. 30111". The London Gazette (Supplement). 1 June 1917. p. 5478.
36. ^ "No. 13099". The Edinburgh Gazette. 4 June 1917. p. 1070.
37. ^ "No. 30333". The London Gazette (Supplement). 12 October 1917. p. 10558.
38. ^ "No. 30487". The London Gazette (Supplement). 18 January 1918. p. 1081.
39. ^ "No. 30452". The London Gazette (Supplement). 28 December 1917. p. 101.
40. ^ ^{a b} Rhodes James 1986, p.52
41. ^ ^{a b c} Rhodes James 1986, p.55
42. ^ Aster 1976, pp. 20–1
43. ^ Rhodes James 1986, pp 56–8
44. ^ "No. 31479". The London Gazette (Supplement). 29 July 1919. p. 9661.
45. ^ "No. 32034". The London Gazette (Supplement). 27 August 1920. p. 8846.
46. ^ ^{a b c} Aster 1976, pp. 8–9
47. ^ ^{a b c d} Rhodes James 1986, pp. 59–62
48. ^ "No. 32030". The London Gazette (Supplement). 24 August 1920. p. 8779.
49. ^ ^{a b} Rhodes James 1986, p.62
50. ^ "No. 32320". The London Gazette (Supplement). 10 May 1921. p. 3821.
51. ^ "No. 32439". The London Gazette (Supplement). 29 August 1921. p. 6832.
52. ^ Aster 1976, p. 9
53. ^ Rhodes James 1986, pp.63–4
54. ^ Aster 1976, p. 10
55. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p32
56. ^ ^{a b} "Measuring Worth - Measures of worth, inflation rates, saving calculator, relative value, worth of a dollar, worth of a pound, purchasing power, gold prices, GDP, history of wages, average wage". www.measuringworth.com. Archived from the original on 31 March 2016. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
57. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p 622
58. ^ "ADONIS OF BRITISH POLITICS". The Examiner. Launceston, Tasmania. 18 February 1939. p. 1. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
59. ^ Aster 1976, p. 11
60. ^ ^{a b} Rhodes James 1986, pp 78–9
61. ^ ^{a b} Aster 1976, pp. 12–13
62. ^ ^{a b} Rhodes James 1986, pp 84–6
63. ^ ^{a b} Rhodes James 1986, p85
64. ^ Aster 1976, p. 14
65. ^ Rhodes James 1986, pp 87–9
66. ^ Aster 1976, p. 15
67. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p91
68. ^ ^{a b} Rhodes James 1986, p103
69. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p92
70. ^ ^{a b} Rhodes James 1986, p101
71. ^ Aster 1976, p.19
72. ^ This was the speech in which Churchill declared "Thank God for the French Army", and in which he stated that Ramsay MacDonald had "more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest number of words into the smallest amount of thought". Although Churchill compared Eden's planned trip to see Mussolini to the Holy Roman Emperor's's trip to Canossa, they had a friendly drink afterwards. [Rhodes James 1986, pp. 126–7]
73. ^ Hansard. 23 March 1933.
74. ^ Rhodes James 1986, pp. 126–7
75. ^ Manchester, William (1988). The last lion, Winston Spencer Churchill vol. 2. Alone: 1932–1940. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. pp. 100–101. ISBN 0-316-545120. William Manchester claims that the speech brought him a standing ovation in the House
76. ^ Thorpe 1997, p29
77. ^ Thorpe 2003, p55
78. ^ "No. 34014". The London Gazette. 12 January 1934. p. 311.
79. ^ "No. 34056". The London Gazette. 1 June 1934. p. 3555.
80. ^ "No. 34065". The London Gazette (Supplement). 29 June 1934. p. 4137.
81. ^ Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili (1999). The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. Basic Books. p. 50. ISBN 0-465-00310-9. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
82. ^ Dietrich, Kris. Taboo Genocide: Holodomor 1933 & the Extermination of Ukraine. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
83. ^ W.N. Medlicott et al., Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–39, XVI(H.M.S.O.), pp. 60–66
84. ^ H. Matthew Hefler, "‘In the way’: intelligence, Eden, and British foreign policy towards Italy, 1937–38." Intelligence and National Security (2018): 1-19.
85. ^ "Oxford DNB theme: Glamour boys". Oxforddnb.com. Retrieved 15 June 2010.
86. ^ ^{a b c d e} Whitman, Alden (15 January 1977). "Career Built on Style and Dash Ended with Invasion of Egypt". The New York Times.
87. ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 17, page 669.
88. ^ Blake, Robert (1993). "How Churchill Became Prime MInister". In Blake, Robert B.; Louis, William Roger. Churchill. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 261. ISBN 0-19-820626-7.
89. ^ "THE RETURN OF MR ANTHONY EDEN AND MR MAISKY FROM RUSSIA. 29 DECEMBER 1941, PRINCES PIER, GREENOCK". www.iwm.org.uk.
90. ^ "Thoughts on report from Anthony Eden on discussion with Stalin in Moscow, 23 December 1941 – Atlantic Archive: UK-US Relations in an Age of Global War 1939–1945".
91. ^ Gallant0 (1 December 2011). "Russia's War - Blood Upon the Snow [04-10] Between Life And Death" – via YouTube.
92. ^ Zhukov, Georgy (1974). Marshal of Victory, Volume II. Pen and Sword Books Ltd. p. 50. ISBN 9781781592915.
93. ^ ^{a b} Andrews, Allen (1976). Exemplary Justice. London: Harrap. ISBN 978-0-245-52775-3.
94. ^ "The Myriad Chronicles". Johannes Rammund De Balliel-Lawrora, 2010. p.113. ISBN 145009791X
95. ^ A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time by Howard M. Sachar, Alfred A. Knopf, N.Y., 2007
96. ^ "Casualty Details". CWGC. 23 June 1945. Retrieved 15 June 2010.
97. ^ "Record from The Nomination Database for the Nobel Prize in Peace, 1901–1956". Nobel Foundation. Archived from the original on 4 September 2013. Retrieved 14 May 2010.
98. ^ Williams, Charles Harold Macmillan (2009) p. 183
99. ^ ^{a b} "Foreign News: Sir Anthony Eden: The Man Who Waited". Time. 11 April 1955. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
100. ^ Charmley 1995, pp. 30, 246–9
101. ^ ^{a b} Charmley 1995, p299
102. ^ Turner, Suez 1956: The Inside Story of the First Oil War, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 978-0340837696, 2007
103. ^ ^{a b} Charmley 1995, pp 274-5
104. ^ Gilbert, Martin. Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair: 1945–1965. (c) 1988: pp 298–300
105. ^ "No. 40310". The London Gazette. 26 October 1954. p. 6067.
106. ^ "Whatever happened to full employment?". BBC News. 13 October 2011.
107. ^ James Eayrs, The Commonwealth and Suez: A Documentary Survey (Oxford University Press, 1964)
108. ^ ^{a b c} "Anthony Eden and the Suez Crisis". History Today. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
109. ^ Thorpe (2003), p.506
110. ^ Ian J. Bickerton and Carla L. Klausner, A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, pp. 12–127
111. ^ Dyer, Clare (9 March 2004). "Clare Dyer: Legality of the war in Iraq". The Guardian. London.
112. ^ Robert McNamara. Britain, Nasser and the balance of power in the Middle East, 1952–1967 (2003) p. 46
113. ^ Charles Williams, Harold Macmillan (2009) p. 254
114. ^ "With Crocker's exit, a chance for a new approach to Afghanistan". The Christian Science Monitor. 23 May 2012. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
115. ^ ^{a b c} The Rt Hon Lord Owen CH (6 May 2005). "The effect of Prime Minister Anthony Eden's illness on his decision-making during the Suez crisis". Qjmed.oxfordjournals.org. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
116. ^ Macgregor, Col. Douglas (31 March 2011). "Obama and Eden, kindred connivers". The Washington Times. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
117. ^ Tony Shaw, "Government Manipulation of the Press during the 1956 Suez Crisis," Contemporary Record, 1994, 8#2, pp 274–288
118. ^ "UK considered cutting off Nile". BBC News.
119. ^ Williams, Harold Macmillan (2009) pp. 250–252
120. ^ James, Anthony Eden, pp 462–5, quote p 472 dated 31 July 1956
121. ^ C. Philip Skardon, A Lesson for Our Times: How America Kept the Peace in the Hungary-Suez Crisis of 1956 (2010) pp 194–5
122. ^ Gorst, Anthony; Johnman, Lewis (1997). The Suez crisis. Routledge Sources in History. Psychology Press. p. 115. ISBN 0-415-11449-7.
123. ^ Dietl, Ralph "Suez 1956: A European Intervention?" pp. 259–273 from Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 43, Issue # 2, April 2008, p. 273
124. ^ Simon C. Smith (2008). Reassessing Suez 1956: New Perspectives on the Crisis and Its Aftermath. Ashgate. p. 109.
125. ^ "Drama sparks Suez Crisis memories". Norfolk life – Eastern Daily Press. 30 June 2011. Archived from the original on 2 November 2014. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
126. ^ "Gamal Nasser : Biography". Spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk. Archived from the original on 14 June 2012. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
127. ^ ^{a b} Kyle, Keith Britain's End of Empire in the Middle East p. 489
128. ^ Bingham, John (2 October 2008). "Sir Anthony Eden's cabinet discussed concealing Suez 'collusion', records show". The Daily Telegraph. London.
129. ^ ^{a b c d} Rothwell 1992, p244, 247
130. ^ Charmley 1995 pp 352–3
131. ^ Rhodes James 1986, pp. 591–2 Rhodes James was a clerk of the House of Commons in the 1950s. His account of this incident appears to be that of a personal eyewitness.
132. ^ James, Anthony Eden p 595
133. ^ Charmley 1995 p353
134. ^ Rothwell 1992, pp 245–6
135. ^ James, Anthony Eden pp 599–600
136. ^ Aster 1976, intro (no page number)
137. ^ Thorpe 2010, pp 357–58
138. ^ Mark Garnett; et al. (2017). British Foreign Policy since 1945. p. 154.
139. ^ Rhodes James 1986, pp 612–14
140. ^ Robert Rhodes James (1986) Anthony Eden
141. ^ Letter, The Daily Telegraph, 7 August 1990.
142. ^ Anthony Nutting (1967) No End of a Lesson
143. ^ D. R. Thorpe (2003) Eden
144. ^ Thorpe, DR (1 Nov 2006). "What we failed to learn from Suez". The Telegraph. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
145. ^ Rothwell 1992, pp 254–55
146. ^ When Britain and France nearly married 15 January 2007
147. ^ See David Faber (2005) Speaking for England
148. ^ See, for example, Julian Jackson (2003) The Fall of France
149. ^ ^{a b} "Postscript to Suez", recording conversation of 9 April 1957: John Colville (1985) The Fringes of Power, Volume Two
150. ^ ^{a b} Rhodes James 1986, pp 608–9
151. ^ ^{a b} Rhodes James 1986, pp 609–10
152. ^ "No. 42411". The London Gazette. 14 July 1961. p. 5175.
153. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p617
154. ^ Rothwell 1992, p248
155. ^ ^{a b} Rhodes James 1986, p611
156. ^ We would have done the same under Nazi occupation Tuesday 25 April 2006
157. ^ Aster 1976, pp. 164-5
158. ^ ^{a b} Rothwell 1992, p 249
159. ^ Rothwell 1992, p251
160. ^ Rothwell 1992, pp 246–7
161. ^ Roberts, Chalmers (April 1960). "Suez in Retrospect: Anthony Eden's Memoirs". The Atlantic. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
162. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p. 616 It is unclear from the wording whether this includes the initial £100,000
163. ^ Rhodes James 1986, pp 68–72
164. ^ Rhodes James 1986, pp 96–7
165. ^ ^{a b} Rhodes James 1986, p158
166. ^ Thorpe 2003, p. 313.
167. ^ The Mail on Sunday, Anthony Eden's Cleopatra; EXCLUSIVE:The beautiful American Countess, and her passionate affair with a Prime Minister-in-waiting., 26 January 1997
168. ^ "Books: Not New but Fresh". Time. 23 June 1947. Retrieved 15 June 2010.
169. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p93
170. ^ Kunne, Gabriel (2003). "Anthony Eden's bile duct: portrait of an ailing leader". ANZ J Surgery. 73 (5): 341–345. PMID 12752293.
171. ^ Owen, David (1 June 2005). "The effect of Prime Minister Anthony Eden's illness on his decision-making during the Suez crisis". QJM: An International Journal of Medicine. 96 (6): 387–402. Retrieved 10 December 2017.
172. ^ Cecil Beaton, diary, quoted in Hugo Vickers (1994) Loving Garbo
173. ^ Owen, David (1 June 2005). "The effect of Prime Minister Anthony Eden's illness on his decision-making during the Suez crisis". QJM: An International Journal of Medicine. 96 (6): 387–402. Retrieved 10 December 2017.
174. ^ D.R. Thorpe, Eden: The Life and Times of Anthony Eden First Earl of Avon, 1897-1977 (New York: Random House, 2003)
175. ^ "Clarissa Eden: A witness to history". The Telegraph. 21 October 2007. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
176. ^ "Special Collections". Special-coll.bham.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 June 2010.
177. ^ "Nicholas Eden, Earl of Avon And Former Aide to Thatcher". The New York Times. Associated Press. 21 August 1985. Retrieved 16 November 2016.
178. ^ Sir Oswald Mosley. My Life London, 1968
179. ^ Rothwell 1992, p250
180. ^ Rothwell 1992, p.255
181. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p624
182. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p161
183. ^ Evelyn Shuckburgh: Descent to Suez. Diaries 1951–1956. London, 1986
184. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p623
185. ^ Rothwell 1992, p254
186. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p160
187. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p162
188. ^ Rothwell 1992, pp 251–2
189. ^ Rhodes James 1986, p625

Bibliography

• Aster, Sidney (1976). Anthony Eden. London: St Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-04235-6. Online free
• Barker, Elisabeth. Churchill & Eden at War (1979) 346p.
• Carlton, David (1981). Anthony Eden, a Biography. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-713-90829-9.
• Churchill, Winston S. (1948). The Gathering Storm. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
• Dutton, David. Anthony Eden: a life and reputation (1997) Online free
• Charmley, John (1996). Churchill's Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American Special Relationship 1940–57. London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-340-59760-6. OCLC 247165348.;
• Hathaway, Robert M. "Suez, the perfect failure," Political Science Quarterly, Summer 1994, 109#2 pp 361–66 in JSTOR
• Hefler, H. Matthew. "‘In the way’: intelligence, Eden, and British foreign policy towards Italy, 1937–38." Intelligence and National Security 33#6 (2018): 1-19.
• Henderson, John T. "Leadership Personality and War: The Cases of Richard Nixon and Anthony Eden," Political Science Dec 1976, 28#2 pp 141–164,
• James, Robert Rhodes. "Anthony Eden and the Suez Crisis," History Today, November 1986, 36#11 pp 8–15
• James, Robert Rhodes. Anthony Eden: A Biography (1986), detailed scholarly biography
• Jones, Matthew. "Macmillan, Eden, the war in the Mediterranean and Anglo-American relations." Twentieth Century British History 8.1 (1997): 27-48.
• Lamb, Richard (1987). The Failure of the Eden Government. London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd. ISBN 978-0-283-99534-7.
• Mallett, Robert. "Fascist Foreign Policy and Official Italian views of Anthony Eden in the 1930s,"Historical Journal 43.1 (2000): 157-187.
• Morewood, Steven. "Failure of a Mission: Anthony Eden's Balkans Odyssey to save Greece, 12 February–7 April 1941." Global War Studies 10.1 (2013): 6-75.
• Pearson, Jonathan. Sir Anthony Eden and the Suez Crisis: Reluctant Gamble (2002) ISBN 9780333984512
• Rose, Norman. "The Resignation of Anthony Eden." Historical Journal 25.4 (1982): 911-931.
• Rothwell, V. Anthony Eden: a political biography, 1931–1957 (1992)
• Ruane, Kevin. "SEATO, MEDO, and the Baghdad Pact: Anthony Eden, British Foreign Policy and the Collective Defense of Southeast Asia and the Middle East, 1952–1955," Diplomacy & Statecraft, March 2005, 16#1, pp 169–199
• Ruane, Kevin. "The Origins of the Eden–Dulles Antagonism: The Yoshida Letter and the Cold War in East Asia 1951–1952." Contemporary British History 25#1 (2011): 141-156.
• Ruane, Kevin, and James Ellison. "Managing the Americans: Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan and the Pursuit of 'Power-by-Proxy' in the 1950s," Contemporary British History, Autumn 2004, 18#3, pp 147–167
• Thorpe, D. R. "Eden, (Robert) Anthony, first earl of Avon (1897–1977)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) online
• Thorpe, D. R. Eden: The Life and Times of Anthony Eden, First Earl of Avon, 1897–1977. London: Chatto and Windus, 2003 ISBN 0-7126-6505-6). detailed scholarly biography
  • Jay, Peter. Review of the above The Guardian 22 March 2003.
• Thorpe, D. R. (2010). Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 978-1844135417.
• Woodward, Llewellyn. British Foreign Policy in the Second World War (1962) Abridged version of his massive five volume history; focuses on Foreign Office and British missions abroad, under Eden's control. 592pp

Primary sources

• Boyle, Peter. Eden-Eisenhower Correspondence, 1955-1957 (2005) 230p.

External links

• Search and download private office papers of Eden from The National Archives' website
• "Archival material relating to Anthony Eden". UK National Archives.
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Anthony Eden
• University of Birmingham Special Collections The Avon Papers including on the Suez Crisis
• Works by or about Anthony Eden at Internet Archive
• Works by Anthony Eden at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Sir Anthony Eden – obituary (Newsreel). British Pathé. 1957. Retrieved 8 March 2010.
• Portraits of Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• "Prime Ministers in the Post-War world: Anthony Eden", lecture by Dr David Carlton, given at Gresham College, 10 May 2007 (available for download as video or audio files)
• Newspaper clippings about Anthony Eden in the 20th Century Press Archives of the German National Library of Economics (ZBW)

Political offices
Preceded by Hugh Dalton	Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 1931–1934	Succeeded by The Earl Stanhope
Preceded by Stanley Baldwin	Lord Privy Seal 1934–1935	Succeeded by The Marquess of Londonderry
Preceded by Unknown	Minister without Portfolio for League of Nations Affairs 1935	Succeeded by Unknown
Preceded by Sir Samuel Hoare	Foreign Secretary 1935–1938	Succeeded by The Viscount Halifax
Preceded by Sir Thomas Inskip	Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs 1939–1940	Succeeded by The Viscount Caldecote
Preceded by Oliver Stanley	Secretary of State for War 1940	Succeeded by David Margesson
Preceded by The Viscount Halifax	Foreign Secretary 1940–1945	Succeeded by Ernest Bevin
Preceded by Sir Stafford Cripps	Leader of the House of Commons 1942–1945	Succeeded by Herbert Morrison
Preceded by Herbert Morrison	Deputy Prime Minister 1951–1955	Vacant Title next held by Rab Butler
	Foreign Secretary 1951–1955	Succeeded by Harold Macmillan
Preceded by Sir Winston Churchill	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1955–1957
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Ernest Pollock	Member of Parliament for Warwick and Leamington 1923–1957	Succeeded by John Hobson
Party political offices
Preceded by Sir Winston Churchill	Leader of the British Conservative Party 1955–1957	Succeeded by Harold Macmillan
Academic offices
Preceded by The Viscount Cecil of Chelwood	Chancellor of the University of Birmingham 1945–1973	Succeeded by Peter Scott
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation	Earl of Avon 1961–1977	Succeeded by Nicholas Eden

1955 United Kingdom general election

The 1955 United Kingdom general election was held on 26 May 1955, four years after the previous general election. It resulted in a substantially increased majority of 60 for the Conservative government under new leader and prime minister Sir Anthony Eden against the Labour Party, then in its twentieth year of leadership by Clement Attlee.

This general election has since been described by many as one of the "dullest" post-war elections, because there was little change in the country, with Labour steadily losing ground owing to infighting between the left (Bevanites) and the right (Gaitskellites). This resulted in an unclear election message from the Labour Party. It was the fifth and last general election fought by Labour leader Clement Attlee, who by this time was 72. Eden had only become leader of the Conservative Party a few weeks before the election, after the retirement of Winston Churchill, but he had long been considered the heir apparent to the Conservative leadership. The Conservatives were hoping to take advantage of the end of food rationing and the good mood created by the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953. Eden himself was telegenic, although not a great public speaker, and gradual economic growth benefited the party greatly (BBC News 2005).

The 1955 election remains the last time the Conservative Party won the most seats in Scotland, and was also the last time it won the most Scottish seats of any unionist party until the 2017 election. After 1959, Labour established itself as the dominant party in Scotland at UK general elections, a position it maintained until the rise of the pro-independence Scottish National Party at the 2015 election.

For the first time, television took a prominent role in the campaign; this is the earliest UK general election of which television coverage survives (the 1950 and 1951 election nights were not recorded). Only three hours of the coverage, presented by Richard Dimbleby, was kept; this was rebroadcast on BBC Parliament on the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the date of the election.

On election day, the Daily Mirror had printed the front-page headline "Don't Let The Tories Cheat Our Children", urging its readers to elect Labour on the basis that it had "built a better Britain for us all" (Daily Mirror 2012).

1956 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference

The 1956 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference was the eighth Meeting of the Heads of Government of the Commonwealth of Nations. It was held in the United Kingdom in June 1956, and was hosted by that country's Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden.

The new prime minister of Ceylon, Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike pressured Eden to remove British military bases in Ceylon; Britain agreed to close the installations.In international affairs, the leaders expressed their support for the People's Republic of China and Japan being admitted to the United Nations (see China and the United Nations) and welcomed liberalization in the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev hailing the "significant changes" in Soviet domestic and foreign policy as being positive steps for world peace. British attempts to negotiate a diplomatic settlement over Greek and Turkish claims regarding the soon to be independent British colony of Cyprus were also discussed.

1957 Warwick and Leamington by-election

The 1957 Warwick and Leamington by-election was fought on 7 March 1957 when the incumbent Conservative MP, the ex-Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden, retired from Parliament. The seat was retained by the Conservative candidate John Hobson.

Alvediston

Alvediston is a small village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, about 7 miles (11 km) east of Shaftesbury and 11 miles (18 km) southwest of Salisbury. The area is the source of the River Ebble and is within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 to 1957 and won the 1955 general election for the Conservatives, lived at Alvediston Manor from 1966 until his death in 1977. He was buried in St Mary's churchyard.

Anthony Eden hat

An "Anthony Eden" hat, or simply an "Anthony Eden", was a type of headgear popularized in Britain in the mid-20th century by politician Anthony Eden, later 1st Earl of Avon (1897–1977). Eden, who was known for his sartorial elegance, favoured a silk-brimmed, black felt Homburg at a time when most Britons preferred the trilby or the bowler. Eden held a number of cabinet posts in the 1930's and 40's and was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957.

The hat became so associated with him that it was commonly known in the UK as the "Anthony Eden" (or, in London's Savile Row, simply as the "Eden", ). It was not marketed as such and the name was purely informal, but the use of the term was widespread, entering dictionaries and phrase books: for example, it was still listed in the 17th edition of Brewer in 2005 and as recently as 2010 the fashion "guru" Trinny Woodall cited the hat as an example of Eden's reputation for being well dressed. It came into particular vogue among civil servants and diplomats in Whitehall and, to that extent, rather belied the stereotypical view, that lasted until well after the Second World War, of civil servants as a "bowler hat" brigade.

Any Old Iron (novel)

Any Old Iron is a fantasy novel by British writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1989.The novel revolves on a modern update of the Excalibur legend. Among the historical figures fictionalised in the novel are Chaim Weizmann, A. J. Cronin, Winston Churchill, Éamon de Valera, Anthony Eden and Joseph Stalin.

The action centres on the progress of a Welsh-Jewish family through the tumultuous first half of the 20th century and culminates in the birth of Israel.

Brigade major

A brigade major was the chief of staff of a brigade in the British Army. He most commonly held the rank of major, although the appointment was also held by captains, and was head of the brigade's "G - Operations and Intelligence" section directly, and oversaw the two other branches, "A - Administration" and "Q - Quartermaster". Intentionally ranked lower than the lieutenant-colonels commanding the brigade's combat battalions, his role was to expand on, detail and execute the intentions of the commanding brigadier.

In 1913, staff captains of artillery in the British Army were re-styled as brigade majors to bring them into line with cavalry and infantry practice. In the 21st century, the title is no longer used except in the Household Division and in divisional-level artillery headquarters. As of 2014, the title is still retained by HQ London District.During World War I, the brigade major was reportedly "a key personality who affected the health and happiness of the battalions." He was in most frequent contact with the front-line troops and was responsible for planning brigade operations. Many brigade majors held the rank of captain, e.g., the future prime minister, Anthony Eden, was a brigade major at the age of twenty-one.

The practice of using brigade majors has continued in some Commonwealth armies, such as that of India. The position was a standard fixture in the British Army and Canadian Army until between 1982 and 1984 when the NATO system was adopted and brigade G-3 (Operations), also known as "Chief of Staff", replaced the brigade major. In the old system, the brigade major was a Staff Officer 2 in charge of "G Branch", abbreviated "GSO2", General Staff Officer (Grade 2).

D. R. Thorpe

D. R. (Richard) Thorpe (born 1943) is a historian and biographer who has written biographies of three British Prime Ministers of the mid 20th century, Sir Anthony Eden, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Macmillan.

Eden ministry

Following the resignation of Winston Churchill in April 1955, Anthony Eden, then-Foreign Secretary, took over as Leader of the Conservative Party, and thus became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Upon assuming office, Eden asked Queen Elizabeth II to dissolve parliament and called a general election for May 1955. After winning the general election with a majority of 60 seats in the House of Commons, Eden governed until his resignation on 10 January 1957.

France and the Commonwealth of Nations

Relations between the French Republic and the Commonwealth of Nations have undergone successive periods of change since the Commonwealth's creation.

The Commonwealth's predecessor, the British Empire, was a notable rival to France's own empire. Even through eras of Entente cordiale, decolonisation, and political integration with the United Kingdom (the leading Commonwealth member) in the European Union, there has been conflict between French and Commonwealth interests, particularly in Africa. The Fashoda syndrome has shaped French attitudes to prevent Commonwealth influence in French-speaking countries, believing their interests to be mutually-exclusive.

Despite these rivalries and dual structures, at times, it has been suggested that France join the Commonwealth. In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, during which France and the United Kingdom's interests in the Middle East aligned, it was proposed by French Prime Minister Guy Mollet that France and the UK create a Franco-British Union, with common citizenship and Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. His British counterpart, Anthony Eden, instead proposed that France join the Commonwealth, with Commonwealth citizenship rights and recognising the Queen as Head of the Commonwealth. However, this was rejected by Mollet.

Historical rankings of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom

The Times constructed a poll for the first time of all British prime ministers in the lead-up to the 2010 general election. Before this there were two polls in 1999 and 2000, carried out by BBC Radio 4 and the British Politics Group—both consulted only a relatively small number of experts. A wider-reaching poll was conducted in 2004 by the University of Leeds and Ipsos MORI. All rankings involved only prime ministers from the 20th and 21st centuries.

Homburg hat

A homburg is a semi-formal hat of stiff felt, characterized by a single dent running down the center of the crown (called a "gutter crown"), a grosgrain hatband, a stiff brim shaped in a "kettle curl", and a bound edge brim trim. It is usually offered in dark colours, although lighter grey variations exist. The original homburg was of slightly more generous proportions than often seen in 21st-century versions.Although the homburg is considered a more formal hat, it is not an equivalent alternative to the top hat for formal attire, but more usually worn with clothing appropriate for semi-formal attire or at least informal attire. Considered an equivalent semi-formal hat, though, is the boater.

The name originates from Bad Homburg in Hesse, Germany, from where it was popularised in the late 19th century.

Jeremy Northam

Jeremy Philip Northam (born 1 December 1961) is an English actor. After a number of television roles, he earned attention as Mr. Knightley in the 1996 film adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. He has appeared in the films Gosford Park, Amistad, The Winslow Boy, Enigma, Martin and Lewis, amongst others. He also played Thomas More in the Showtime series The Tudors. From 2016 to 2017 he appeared as Anthony Eden in the Netflix series The Crown.

Michael Elwyn

Michael Elwyn (born 23 August 1942) is a Welsh actor, notable for his work in film (Shadow Man), stage (The Audience, as Anthony Eden) and television (Stella).

Elwyn was born in Pontypridd. He is the partner of actress Alison Steadman, and is best known for his role as Sir Edward in the BBC Series of Robin Hood.

Mounteere Cap

Mounteere Cap (also known as a Montero Cap) is a type of cap formerly worn in Spain for hunting. It has a spherical crown and (frequently fur-lined) flaps able to be drawn down to protect the ears and neck.

Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs has been a junior position in the British government since 1782, subordinate to both the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and since 1945 also to the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. The post has been based at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which was created in 1968, by the merger of the Foreign Office, where the position was initially based, and the Commonwealth Office. Notable holders of the office include Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville, John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley, Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, and Anthony Eden. The current holders are Alistair Burt and Henry Bellingham.

Warwick and Leamington (UK Parliament constituency)

Warwick and Leamington is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since the 2017 general election by Matt Western, of the Labour Party.

Windlestone Hall

Windlestone Hall is a 19th-century country house situated near Rushyford, County Durham, England. It is a Listed building.The Eden family who held the manor of Windlestone in the 17th century were Royalists during the English Civil War and Colonel Robert Eden who had served in the King's army was obliged to compound for the return of his confiscated estate. Following the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, his grandson, also Robert Eden, was created a baronet in 1672, (see Eden baronets).In 1835, the fifth Baronet, Robert Johnson Eden, replaced the 16th-century manor house with a new mansion designed by architect Ignatius Bonomi. The two-storey house presents a twelve-bay balustraded frontage to the east. A balustraded Doric order colonnade extends across nine bays of the ground floor. The north ends in a large apse. A billiard room was attached to the north east in the mid-19th century.On the death of the fifth Baronet in 1844, the estate and Baronetcy passed to his first cousin once removed, Sir William Eden, who was already the fourth Eden of Maryland Baronet. He was High Sheriff of Durham in 1848.

The house was the birthplace in 1897 of Anthony Eden, who entered parliament as a Conservative Party Member of Parliament in 1923, later serving as a cabinet minister before serving as prime minister from 1955 to 1957. At the time of his death in 1977, he was living in Wiltshire.The house and estate were used as a prisoner of war camp during World War II, a satellite camp of Harperley POW Camp 93. Between 1957 and 2006, it was occupied by Windlestone Hall School, a local authority residential special school. The school closed in 2006, and was sold for £240,000 by Durham County Council to William Davenport, a private investor, in 2011.

Durham County Council was criticised for the sale, especially when Windlestone Hall was put back on the market three years later for £2,500,000 - over ten times the previous sale price.Davenport, the investor, was jailed for 6 years in 2016 for using forged documents to purchase the house and estate.Windlestone Hall was listed for auction with an entry guide price of £400,000 in July 2017. On the 17th July 2017 it was removed from the auction and marked as "sold prior to auction" to an, as yet, unknown buyer.

Yvon Delbos

Yvon Delbos (7 May 1885 – 15 November 1956) was a French Radical-Socialist Party politician and minister.

Delbos was born in Thonac, Dordogne, and entered a career as a journalist, and became a member of the Radical-Socialist Party. He subsequently served as Minister of Education (1925), Minister of Justice (1936), and notably as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Popular Front governments of Léon Blum and Camille Chautemps.In January 1937, unveiling a war memorial at Chateauroux, Delbos, in reply to Hitler's Reichstag speech of the previous day, emphasised the need for Franco-German understanding and for both countries to find new markets so that industrial expansion might replace rearmament. After representing France at the Nine-Power Conference at Brussels on November 3, he expounded French Foreign Policy in a debate in the Chamber on November 18–19, emphasizing Anglo-French friendship and the necessity for its maintenance. Ten days later, he visited London with Chautemps to receive a report from Neville Chamberlain and Anthony Eden on the result of the Halifax-Hitler talks. Afterwards, he set out on a tour of the central and eastern European capitols, visiting Warsaw on December 3, Bucharest on December 8, Belgrade on December 12, and Prague on December 15, in each case discussing the European situation with the ministers of the countries in question, and seeking to foster friendly relations with France.On December 10, 1937, it was announced that a plot to assassinate him at Prague had been discovered by the French Police and the prospective assailant was arrested. He was reappointed Foreign Minister in the reconstructed Chautemps government in the third week of January 1938 but was excluded from Leon Blum's cabinet in March 1938.During the Spanish Civil War, he worked alongside his British counterpart Anthony Eden in fleshing out the policy of nonintervention.