Anthony Eden
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.[18] This was a similar offer, in reverse, to that made by Churchill (drawing on a plan devised by Leo Amery [19]) in June 1940 [20]. 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) [21]. Mollet's request for Union with Britain was rejected by Eden, but the additional possibility of France joining the British Commonwealth 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" [21].
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Retirement (1957-77)
Eden soon retired and lived quietly with his second wife Clarissa, formerly Clarissa Spencer-Churchill, niece of Sir Winston, in 'Rose Bower' by the banks of the River Ebble in Broad Chalke, Wiltshire and published a highly acclaimed personal memoir, Another World (1976), as well as several volumes of political memoirs, in which he, however, denied that there had been any collusion with France and Israel. In his view, American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, whom he particularly disliked, was responsible for the ill fate of the Suez adventure. This and other proved untruths did further diminish his stand. His main concern in his later years was trying to rebuild his reputation that was destroyed by the Suez fiasco, often taking legal actions against authors who didn't share his point of view [1]. He sat for extensive interviews for the famed multi-part Thames Television production, The World at War, which was broadcast in 1974. 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.[22] From 1945–1973, Eden was Chancellor of the University of Birmingham, England.
On a trip to the United States in 1976-1977 to spend Christmas and New Year with Averell and Pamela Harriman, his health rapidly deteriorated. At his family's request, James Callaghan arranged for an RAF plane that was already in America to divert to Miami to fly him home. The Earl of Avon died from liver cancer in Salisbury in 1977 at the age of 79; born in the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, he thus died in the year of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. Eden's papers are housed at the University of Birmingham Special Collections [1]
Eden's surviving son, Nicholas Eden (1930–1985), known as Viscount Eden until 1977, was also a politician and was a minister in the Thatcher government until his premature death from AIDS at the age of 54.
Anthony Eden is buried in the country churchyard at Alvediston, just 3 miles upstream from 'Rose Bower' at the source of the River Ebble.
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Character and speaking style
Anthony Eden was always a particularly cultured appearance, well-mannered and good-looking. This gave him huge popular support throughout his political life, but some contemporaries felt that 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 that he never understood why Eden was so strongly pushed by the Tory party, while he felt that Eden's abilities were very much inferior to those of Harold Macmillan and Oliver Stanley.[23] Also, Secretary of State Dean Acheson regarded him as a quite old-fashioned amateur in politics typical of the British Establishment.[1] Recent biographies however put more emphasis on Eden's outstanding achievements in foreign policy and perceive him to have held deep convictions regarding world peace and security as well as a strong social conscience.[5]
Eden was, for all his abilities not a very effective public speaker. Too often in his career, for instance in the late thirties, following his resignation from Chamberlain´s government, his parliamentary performances disappointed many of his followers. Churchill once even commented on an Eden speech that the latter had used every cliché except "God is love" [7]. His 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 advisors than in Cabinet meetings and public speeches, sometimes tending to become enraged and behaving "like a child" [24] only to regain his temper within a few minutes [1].
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Eden in popular culture
As Secretary of State for War in 1940, Eden authorised the setting-up of the Local Defence Volunteers (soon renamed the Home Guard). In the film of the TV sitcom Dad's Army, the (fictional) Walmington-on-Sea platoon is formed in response to Eden's radio broadcast. The debonair Sergeant Wilson is often said to resemble Eden, something he takes enormous pride in.
Eden appears as a character in James P. Hogan's science-fiction novel The Proteus Operation.
Eden appears as a character in the 2008 play Never So Good – portrayed as a hysterical, pill-addicted wreck, spying on members of his own Cabinet by ordering government chauffeurs to report on their comings and goings. He is shown being overwhelmed by the chaos of the Suez Crisis and eventually forced out of office by his Conservative Party colleagues, at the urging of the American government.
Eden is mentioned in the 1993 film The Remains of the Day when Anthony Hopkins´s character mentions that Eden has also been a guest at Darlington Hall.
Eden is also mentioned in a song by The Kinks, "She's Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina" from the 1969 album Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire).
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The Eden Government
- Anthony Eden: Prime Minister
- Lord Chancellor: Lord Kilmuir
- Lord President of the Council: Lord Salisbury
- Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons: Harry Crookshank
- Chancellor of the Exchequer: R.A. Butler
- Foreign Secretary: Harold Macmillan
- Home Secretary: Gwilym Lloyd George
- Secretary of State for the Colonies: Alan Lennox-Boyd
- Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations: Lord Home
- President of the Board of Trade: Peter Thorneycroft
- Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Lord Woolton:
- Minister of Education: Sir David Eccles:
- Secretary of State for Scotland: James Stuart
- Minister of Agriculture: Derick Heathcoat Amory
- Minister of Labour and National Service: Sir Walter Turner Monckton
- Minister of Defence: Selwyn Lloyd
- Minister of Housing and Local Government: Duncan Sandys
- Minister of Pensions and National Insurance: Osbert Peake
Changes
- December 1955 - Rab Butler succeeds Harry Crookshank as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons. Harold Macmillan succeeds Butler as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Selwyn Lloyd succeeds Macmillan as Foreign Secretary. Sir Walter Monckton succeeds Lloyd as Minister of Defence. Iain Macleod succeeds Monckton as Minister of Labour and National Service. Lord Selkirk succeeds Lord Woolton as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Minister of Public Works, Patrick Buchan-Hepburn, enters the Cabinet. The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance leaves the Cabinet upon Peake's retirement.
- October 1956: Sir Walter Monckton becomes Paymaster-General. Antony Henry Head succeeds Monckton as Minister of Defence.
Eden's initial cabinet is remarkable for the fact that 10 out of the original 18 members were Old Etonians: Eden, Salisbury, Crookshank, Macmillan, Home, Stuart, Thorneycroft, Heathcoat Amory, Sandys and Peake were all educated at Eton.
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The Grey-Eden connection
Charles Grey, 1st Earl Grey = Elizabeth Grey
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Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey William Grey
Prime Minister = Maria Shireff
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Georgina Plowden = Sir William Grey
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Sir William Eden = Sybil Grey
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Anthony Eden
Prime Minister
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References
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2007) |
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j David Dutton: Anthony Eden. A Life and Reputation London, Arnold, 1997
- ^ Churchill had been a major founder of the War Criminal Trials policy, by drafting the Statement on Atrocities of the Moscow Declaration, signed on October 30, 1943 which, under the emergence of the Cold War, he most notably started to undermine since 1947, when he successfully urged the Attlee government to obtain the commuting in a life sentence the death penalty inflicted upon Albert Kesselring by a British Military Court.
- ^ Rating British Prime Ministers 29 November 2004
- ^ Churchill 'greatest PM of 20th Century' 4 January 2000
- ^ a b Robert Rhodes James (1986) Anthony Eden; D.R. Thorpe (2003) Eden
- ^ Oxford DNB theme: Glamour boys
- ^ a b Sir Anthony Eden: The Man Who Waited - TIME
- ^ Birmingham University Archives, hereafter, 'BUA',FO 800/846, fo. 2, Churchill to Eden, 29 Nov. 1951; fo. 12, Churchill to Eden 8 June 1952, cited in Donald Bloxham, Genocide on Trial - War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 168 ISBN 0-19-925904-6.
- ^ Donald Bloxham, Genocide on Trial - War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 169 ISBN 0-19-925904-6, based on LHCMA, Liddell Hart 11/1952/8, Liddell Hart's notes on London visit 1-3 July 1952.
- ^ PRO, FO, 371/104159, CW 1663/17, Roberts to Strang, 30 Apr. 1953, as cited in Donald Bloxham, Genocide on Trial - War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 169 ISBN 0-19-925904-6.
- ^ (German) Kerstin von Lingen, Kesselrings letzte Schlacht. Kriegsverbrecherprozesse, Vergangenheitspolitik und Wiederbewaffnung: der Fall Kesselring, Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 2004, ISBN 3-506-71749-9.
- ^ Adenauer, Memoirs, p. 447.
- ^ Donald Bloxham, Genocide on Trial - War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 170 ISBN 0-19-925904-6.
- ^ Robert Rhodes James (1986) Anthony Eden
- ^ Letter, Daily Telegraph, 7 August 1990
- ^ Anthony Nutting (1967) No End of a Lesson
- ^ D. R. Thorpe (2003) Eden
- ^ When Britain and France nearly married 15 January 2007
- ^ See David Faber (2005) Speaking for England
- ^ See, for example, Julian Jackson (2003) The Fall of France
- ^ a b "Postscript to Suez", recording conversation of 9 April 1957: John Colville (1985) The Fringes of Power, Volume Two
- ^ We would have done the same under Nazi occupation Tuesday April 25, 2006
- ^ Sir Oswald Mosley. My Life London, 1968
- ^ Evelyn Shuckburgh: Descent to Suez. Diaries 1951-1956. London, 1986
- Books
- Eden, Anthony. The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Sir Anthony Eden KG, PC, MC: Full Circle. (3 volumes) London: Cassell, 1960, 1962, 1965.
- Biographies
- Film: Marcel Ophüls. Le chagrin et la pitié, 1971.
- Thorpe, D.R. Eden: The Life and Times of Anthony Eden, First Earl of Avon, 1897–1977. London: Chatto and Windus, 2003 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7011-6744-0); London: Pimlico, 2004 (paperback, ISBN 0-7126-6505-6).
- Reviewed by Peter Jay in The Guardian, March 22, 2003.
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External links
- More about Anthony Eden on the Downing Street website.
- University of Birmingham Special Collections The Avon Papers including papers on the Suez Crisis
- http://www.discoverychannel.com.au/altered_statesmen/anthony_eden/index.shtml
- http://discoverychannelasia.com/altered_statesmen/eden/index.shtml
- "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)
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| Persondata | |
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| NAME | Eden, Anthony |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | 1st Earl of Avon |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | British politician & Conservative prime minister |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 12, 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | West Auckland, County Durham, England |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 14, 1977 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Alvediston, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England |
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