Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon,
KG,
MC,
PC (12 June 1897
– 14 January 1977) was a
British
Conservative politician, who was
Foreign
Secretary for three periods between 1935 and 1955, including
during
World War II. He was
Prime Minister from
1955 to 1957.
Eden's worldwide reputation as an opponent of
appeasement, a 'Man of Peace', and a skilled
diplomat was overshadowed in the second year of his premiership by
his handling of the
Suez Crisis of 1956,
which critics across party lines regarded as a historic setback for
British foreign
policy, signalling the end of British predominance in the
Middle East.
In the post-war years, Eden was a protagonist of the change in
British policy on
war criminal trials,
which was perhaps best symbolised by his signature under the pardon
conceded to the German Field Marshal
Albert Kesselring on 24 October
1952.
He
is
generally ranked among the least successful British Prime
Ministers of the twentieth century, although two broadly
sympathetic biographies (in 1986 and 2003) have gone some way to
redressing the balance of opinion.
Early career
Eden was
born at Windlestone
Hall
, County Durham,
England, into a very conservative landed gentry family, and
attended Eton
, where he
won a Divinity prize
and excelled at cricket, rugby and rowing, winning House colours in the latter. He was a younger son of
Sir William Eden,
baronet, from an
old titled family.
His mother, Sybil
Frances Grey, was a member of the famous Grey family of Northumberland
(see below). This was perhaps the meaning of
Rab Butler's later gibe that Eden - in
later life a handsome but ill-tempered man - was "half mad baronet,
half beautiful woman". However, there has been credible speculation
for many years that Eden's father was actually the politician and
man of letters
George Wyndham, whom
he resembled in appearance and speech, and with whom his mother was
rumoured to have had an affair..
Eden had
an elder brother called Timothy and a younger brother, Nicholas,
who was killed when the battlecruiser
HMS Indefatigable
blew up and sank at the Battle of Jutland
in 1916.
During the
First World War, Eden served
with the 21st (Yeoman Rifles) Battalion of the
King's Royal Rifle Corps, and
reached the rank of
captain. He
received a
Military Cross, and at the
age of twenty-one became the youngest brigade-major in the British
Army.
At a
conference in the early 1930s, he and Adolf
Hitler observed that they had probably fought on opposite sides
of the trenches in the Ypres
sector. After the war he studied at Christ Church,
Oxford
, where he graduated in Oriental Languages. He was fluent
in French, German and
Persian, and
also spoke Russian and
Arabic.
After fighting a
hopeless seat in the November 1922 General Election, Captain Eden,
as he was still known, was elected Member of Parliament for Warwick and Leamington
in the December 1923 General Election, as a
Conservative. Also in
that year he married
Beatrice
Beckett. They had two sons (as well as a third who died in
infancy), but the marriage was not a success and later broke up
under the strain of a son missing in action.
In the 1924-1929 Conservative Government, Eden was first
Parliamentary Private
Secretary to the Home Secretary, Sir
William Joynson Hicks, and then in
1926 to the Foreign Secretary Sir
Austen Chamberlain. In 1931 he held his
first ministerial office as
Under-Secretary for
Foreign Affairs. In 1934 he was
appointed
Lord Privy Seal and
Minister for the
League of Nations
in
Stanley Baldwin's Government.
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.
However, he was among the first 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.
At this stage in his career Eden was considered as something of a
leader of fashion. He regularly wore a
Homburg hat (similar to a trilby but more
rigid), which became known in Britain as an "
Anthony Eden".
Foreign secretary and resignation (1935-38)
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, and supported prime minister
Neville Chamberlain in his efforts to
preserve peace through reasonable concessions to Germany. He did
not protest when Britain and France failed to oppose
Hitler's reoccupation of the
Rhineland in 1936. His resignation in February 1938 was largely
attributed to growing dissatisfaction with
Chamberlain`s policy of
Appeasement. That is, however, disputed by new
research; it was not the question if there should be negotiations
with Italy, but only when they should start and how far they should
be carried. Similarly, he at no point registered his
dissatisfaction with the appeasement policy directed towards Nazi
Germany in his period as Foreign Secretary. He became a
Conservative dissenter leading a group conservative whip
David Margesson called the
"Glamour
Boys," and a leading anti-appeaser like
Winston Churchill who led a similar group
called
"The Old Guard." Although Churchill claimed to have
lost sleep the night of Eden's resignation (later recounted in his
wartime memoirs (
The Gathering Storm, 1948), they were not
allies, and did not see eye to eye until Churchill became Prime
Minister. There was much speculation that Eden would become a
rallying point for all the disparate opponents of Neville
Chamberlain, but instead 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. As a result, Eden's position
declined heavily amongst politicians, though he remained popular in
the country at large; in later years he was often wrongly supposed
to have resigned in protest at the Munich Agreement.
Second World War (1939-45)
Eden in 1945
In September 1939, on the outbreak of war, Eden, who had briefly
rejoined the army with the rank of
major,
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 after Germany invaded France
in May 1940 and Churchill became Prime Minister. 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. Nevertheless he was in charge of
handling much of the relations between Britain and
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 their treatment of
their British allies.
In 1942 Eden was given the additional job 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. In 1944 Eden went to Moscow to negotiate with the
Soviet Union at the
Tolstoy
Conference. Eden also opposed the
Morgenthau Plan to deindustrialize
Germany.
Eden's
eldest son, Simon Eden, went missing in action, later declared
deceased, while serving as a pilot
with the RAF in Burma
in the
latter days of the Second World War. There was a close bond
between Anthony and Simon, and Simon's death was a great personal
shock to his father, who nevertheless accepted it. Lady Eden
reportedly reacted differently to her son's loss, and this led to a
breakdown in the marriage.
De
Gaulle wrote him a personal letter of condolence in
French.
Post-war
Opposition (1945-51)
After the
Labour Party won the
1945 elections, 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, and Eden was
too loyal to press him. 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", 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 .In these opposition years, however, he
developed some knowledge about domestic affairs and created the
idea of a
"property-owning-democracy", which was only
realized by the
Thatcher
government decades later. His domestic agenda is overall considered
centre-left .
Anthony Eden is the great-great-grandnephew of author
Emily Eden and wrote an introduction to her 1860
novel
The Semi-Detached Couple in 1947.
Return to government (1951-55)
In 1951, the Conservatives returned to office and Eden became
Foreign Secretary for a third time. Churchill was largely a
figurehead in this government, and Eden had an effective control of
British foreign policy for the first time, as the Empire declined
and the
Cold War grew more intense. He
dealt effectively with the various crises of the period, although
Britain was no longer the
world power it
had been before the war.
The success of the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indo-China ranks as
his outstanding achievement of his third term in the Foreign Office. During the summer and fall of 1954, the
Anglo-Egyptian agreement to withdraw all British forces from Egypt
was also negotiated and ratified. In 1950 he and Beatrice Eden were
finally divorced, and in 1952 he married Churchill's niece,
Clarissa
Spencer-Churchill (b. 1920), a nominal Roman Catholic who was
fiercely criticised by Catholic writer
Evelyn Waugh for marrying a divorced man. This
second marriage was much more successful than his first had been.
In 1954 he was made a
Knight of the
Garter and became
Sir Anthony Eden.
The release of war criminals
Upon regaining office, Winston Churchill and Eden moved for the
release of the German war criminals still in British custody ,
following a policy focused on
Anti-Communism and the emerging
Cold War.
This policy had been discreetly pursued
since at least 1947, when Churchill and Harold Alexander had pressured Clement Attlee to commute the death sentence
on the German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, which had been handed
down by a British Military Court in Venice
on 6 May
1947. Kesselring had been called to account for
atrocities perpetrated in Italy during the Second World War, such as the massacre of
more than 1,400 innocent civilians in a series of violent
reprisals, including the Ardeatine massacre
.
In December 1951 Eden introduced to the Cabinet a cleverly drafted
policy, according to which pre-trial custody should be counted
against sentences inflicted upon war criminals, effectively
reducing them. The policy, which apparently aimed only to promote
an equitable principle, exploited a loophole which in certain
instances was effectively used to double a prison reduction already
in effect, as for example, in the case of the German Field Marshal
Erich von Manstein.
Von Manstein was mainly accused of orders equating Partisans to
Jews, thus aiming at their indiscriminate
extermination.
Churchill donated money to von Manstein's
defence, and openly branded the trial against the German Field
Marshal as yet another effort by the then ruling Attlee government
to appease the Soviets
.
Anticipating an extensive interpretation of the pre-trial custody
reduction, the Tribunal that condemned von Manstein on 19 December
1949 explicitly stated in its ruling that "
The period during
which the accused has been in custody has been taken into
account". Nevertheless, Eden pushed ahead with the idea that
it was legitimate to subtract the pre-trial custody time from the
period decreed by judicial decision even in cases such as von
Manstein's.
The pressure on Eden and the government to resolve the war
criminals issue as quickly as possible increased during the summer
of 1952, coinciding with the looming question of the ratification
of the European Defence Community Treaty by West Germany. A lobby
that included
Harold Alexander
(then
Minister of Defence)
and
Basil Liddell Hart strove to
this end, echoing the calls in the same direction coming from the
German
Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and
the press campaign orchestrated in West Germany for the pardoning
of most war criminals. Alexander in particular had gone to
considerable lengths to justify their release in one way or
another, tactically and falsely emphasising health issues and,
almost incredibly, the "melancholy" experienced by jailed war
criminals.
Under
Eden, who as Foreign Minister had taken over responsibility after
the withdrawal of the British High Commission from the International Military
Tribunal
, with the clear approval of Churchill, and based on
the tactics suggested by Alexander, which included adequately
priming prison doctors of which medical aspects to emphasise, both
Kesselring (July) and Manstein (August) were released from prison
under medical pretexts during the summer of 1952, allegedly because
they needed urgent hospitalization for treating, respectively, an
"exploratory operation" on a throat cancer, and cataracts.
Following their operations, both were conveniently left in liberty
for an indefinite convalescence period, and were not to set foot
again in jail..
Ivone Kirkpatrick swiftly
suggested that Adenauer propose the application of the same
principal to the US High Commission, which helped West Germany not
to misunderstand the real significance of the "medical" release of
the Field Marshals, and the policy pursued by both the British and
the US governments.
However, to make the path taken by the British government towards
the war criminals clear to German public opinion, a more explicit
gesture was deemed to be necessary. Therefore, on 24 October 1952
Eden signed an act of clemency in favour of the German Field
Marshal
Albert Kesselring.
Kesselring, who was pardoned in consideration of his allegedly
cancerous throat, addressed a rally of veterans immediately after
his release, calling for the wholesale liberation of all war
criminals.
Afterwards Kesselring lived an active public life for another eight
years, mostly rallying far right veterans as leader of the
organisation
Stahlhelm, Bund der
Frontsoldaten, a post to which he had been elected while still
in prison.
Thus
Eden, albeit with some reluctance and attention for legal
stricture, had put his signature upon a policy commenced by
Churchill which, by means of a broad campaign of rehabilitation of
German military personalities, was aimed at re-establishing a
strong army in what was then West Germany, as a central part of the
NATO
front line at the height of Cold War.
When Churchill took over the Foreign Office because of Eden's
serious health problems in 1953, the plan for liberating the war
criminals was brought to its logical conclusion.
Selwyn Lloyd, the Minister of State in the
Foreign Office with responsibility for German Affairs, was given
carte-blanche to resolve the
issue of war criminals, now seen as no more than embarrassing. On 6
May 1953 Manstein was pardoned, and in 1956 he returned to service
upon Adenauer's call, assuming an important official role in the
resurrection of the German Army.
Prime minister (1955-57)
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, at
which the Conservatives were returned with an increased majority.
But 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
U.S. President Dwight
Eisenhower.
Suez (1956)
The
alliance with the US proved not universal, however, when in July
1956 Gamal Abdel Nasser,
President of Egypt
,
unexpectedly nationalized the Suez Canal
, following the US withdrawal to fund Aswan Dam
. Eden, in conjunction with France decided
Nasser should be removed from power. The canal had been built in
the 19th century by the Suez Canal Company through a concession
from the viceroy of Egypt, but later became owned by its British
and French shareholders. 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. Eden even responded by plotting to assassinate Nasser by
enlisting
Miles Copeland's
assistance, since he was apparently a close friend of Nasser's.
Others believed that Nasser was acting from legitimate patriotic
concerns and the nationalization was determined to by the Foreign
Office as legal.
In
October 1956, after months of negotiation and attempts at mediation
had failed to dissuade Nasser, Britain and France, in conjunction
with Israel
, invaded
Egypt and occupied the Suez Canal Zone. But Eisenhower was
an advocate of
decolonisation, and he
immediately and strongly opposed the invasion. Eden, who faced
domestic pressure from his party to take action, as well as
stopping the decline of British influence in the Middle East, had
ignored Britain's financial dependence on the U.S. in the wake of
World War II, and had overestimated US loyalty towards its closest
ally. Eden was finally forced to bow to American pressure to
withdraw. The
Suez Crisis is widely
taken as marking the end of Britain's status as a superpower.
The Suez fiasco ruined, in many eyes, Eden's reputation for
statesmanship and led to a breakdown
in his
health.
He went on vacation
to Ian Fleming's estate on 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. Eden resigned 9 Jan 1957. Macmillan, despite having himself
been one of the architects of Suez, succeeded him as Prime Minister
in January 1957. Eden retained some of his personal popularity and
was made
Earl of Avon in 1961.
Suez in retrospect
In 1986, Eden's official biographer
Robert Rhodes James re-evaluated
sympathetically Eden's stance over Suez and in 1990, following the
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, James
asked: "Who can now claim that Eden was wrong?". 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". Conversely,
D.
R. Thorpe,
another of Eden's biographers, 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". According to Eden's widow, the then US
President
Dwight D. Eisenhower subsequently regretted his
hostile stance over Suez.
Health issues
A medical mishap would change the course of Eden’s life forever.
During an operation in 1953 to remove
gallstones, Eden's
bile
duct was damaged, allegedly making him susceptible to recurrent
infections and attacks of violent pain and fevers. To overcome this
weakness Eden was prescribed
Benzedrine,
the wonder drug of the 1950s. Regarded by doctors in the 1950s as a
harmless
stimulant, it belongs to the
family of drugs called
amphetamines.
During this time amphetamines 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 actually suffered during the Suez
Crisis. His drug use is now commonly agreed to have been a part of
the reason for the Prime Minister's ill judgment.
Rejected plan for union between Britain and France
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.
This was a similar offer, in reverse, to that made by Churchill
(drawing on a plan devised by
Leo Amery )
in June 1940 . 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) . 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" .
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
. He 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 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. It was not until some years
after his death that a more balanced view of Suez came to be
advanced some historians and other commentators in the light of
subsequent events.
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.
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 January 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.
Anthony Eden is buried in the country churchyard at Alvediston,
just 3 miles upstream from 'Rose Bower' at the source of the River
Ebble.
Eden's papers are housed at the University
of Birmingham Special Collections
Eden's surviving son,
Nicholas Eden (1930–1985),
known as Viscount Eden until 1977, was also a politician and a
minister in the
Thatcher
government until his premature death from
AIDS
at the age of 54.
Character and speaking style
Anthony Eden always made 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.
Also,
Secretary of State Dean Acheson regarded him as a quite
old-fashioned amateur in politics typical of the British
Establishment. However, 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.
Eden was for all his abilities not a very effective
public speaker. Too often in his career, for
instance in the late 1930s, 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.". 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" only to regain his temper within a few
minutes .
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 is mentioned by Ed Norton on The Honeymooners saying that
because of the residency requirements that Anthony Eden could never
be a member of The Racoon Lodge.
Eden is also mentioned in a song by
The
Kinks, "She's Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina" from the 1969
album
Arthur
.
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 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 appears as a character in
James P. Hogan's science-fiction novel
The Proteus
Operation.
The Eden Government
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.
The Grey-Eden connection
Charles Grey, 1st Earl Grey = Elizabeth Grey
|
------------------------------------------
| |
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey William Grey
Prime Minister = Maria Shireff
|
Georgina Plowden = Sir William Grey
|
Sir William Eden = Sybil Grey
|
Anthony Eden
Prime Minister
|
Leticia Eden = Henry
|
Anthony Peet Eden
Partial bibliography
- 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
- 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 30 October 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
- Robert Rhodes James (1986) Anthony Eden; D.R. Thorpe
(2003) Eden
- Alan Campbell-Johanson, Eden - The Making of a
Statesman, Read Books, 2007, p. 9 ISBN 9781406764512
- D. R. Thorpe (2003) Eden; John Charmley (1989)
Chamberlain and the Lost Peace
- Oxford DNB theme: Glamour boys
- Sir Anthony Eden: The Man Who Waited -
TIME
- "Not new but fresh", Time Magazine, June 23,
1947
- 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 April
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.
- 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.
- Ian J. Bickerton and Carla L. Klausner, A Concise History of
the Arab-Israeli Conflict, p.126-127
- 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
- Daily Telegraph, 21 October 2007. Vice-President
Richard Nixon was apparently the source of Eisenhower's regrets:
see Clarissa Eden (2007) A Memoir: From Churchill to
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
- "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 25 April 2006
- Special Collections
- 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).
- Jay, Peter. Review of the above The Guardian 22
March 2003.
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