Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977), was a British statesman, diplomat and military officer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1955 to 1957.
Achieving rapid promotion as a young Conservative member of Parliament, he became foreign secretary aged 38, before resigning in protest at Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy. He returned to that position for most of the Second World War, and held it for a third time in the early 1950s. Having been deputy to Winston Churchill for almost 15 years, Eden succeeded him as the leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister in 1955, and a month later won a general election.
Eden's reputation as 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 a historic setback for British foreign policy, signalling the end of British influence in the Middle East.David Dutton: Anthony Eden. A Life and Reputation (London, Arnold, 1997). Most historians argue that he made a series of blunders, especially not realising the depth of American opposition to military action.Tony Shaw, Eden, Suez & the Mass Media: Propaganda & Persuasion during the Suez Crisis (1996). 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.
Eden is generally considered to be among the least successful of British prime ministers in the 20th century, although two broadly sympathetic biographies have gone some way to shifting the balance of opinion.Robert Rhodes James (1986) Anthony Eden; D. R. Thorpe (2003) Eden.Thorpe (2003) Eden. He was the first of fifteen British prime ministers to be appointed by Queen Elizabeth II in her seventy-year reign.
Family Robert Anthony Eden was born on 12 June 1897 at Windlestone Hall, County Durham, into a conservative family of landed gentry. He was the third of four sons of Sir William Eden, 7th and 5th Baronet, and Sybil Frances Grey, a member of the prominent Grey family of Northumberland. Sir William was a former colonel and local magistrate from an old titled family. An eccentric and often foul-tempered man, he was a talented water-colourist, portraitist, and collector of Impressionists.Aster 1976, p. 2.Rhodes James 1986, pp. 9–14. Eden's mother had wanted to marry Francis Knollys, who later became a significant Royal adviser, but the match was forbidden by the Prince of Wales.Rhodes James 1986, p. 10. Although she was a popular figure locally, she had a strained relationship with her children, and her profligacy ruined the family fortunes, meaning Eden's elder brother Tim had to sell Windlestone Hall in 1936.Rhodes James 1986, p. 6. Referring to his parentage, Rab Butler would later quip that Anthony Eden — a handsome but ill-tempered man — was "half mad baronet, half beautiful woman".
One of Eden's great-grandfathers was William Iremonger, who commanded the 2nd Regiment of Foot during the Peninsular War and fought at the Battle of Vimeiro under Sir Arthur Wellesley (the later Duke of Wellington).Antiques Trade Gazette, 26 November 2011, p. 45. 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 (including the Dukes of Norfolk), as well as Anglican families including 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 also had some Danish (the Schaffalitzky de Muckadell family) and Norwegian (the Bie family) descent.Ole Feldbæk, Ole Justesen, Svend Ellehøj, Kolonierne i Asien og Afrika, 1980, p. 171. 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.Rhodes James 1986, p. 3.
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.Thorpe, D.R. "Eden, (Robert) Anthony, first earl of Avon (1897–1977)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2011. Eden's mother was rumoured to have had an affair with Wyndham. His mother and Wyndham exchanged affectionate communications in 1896 but Wyndham was an infrequent visitor to Windlestone and probably did not reciprocate Sybil's feelings. Eden was amused by the rumours but, according to his biographer Robert Rhodes James, probably did not believe them. He did not resemble his siblings, but his father Sir William attributed this to his being "a Grey, not an Eden".Rhodes James 1986, pp. 16–18.
Eden had an elder brother, John, who was killed in action in 1914, and a younger brother, Nicholas, who was killed when the battlecruiser blew up and sank at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.
Early life
School
Eden was educated at two independent schools. He attended Sandroyd School in Surrey from 1907 to 1910, where he excelled in languages.Thorpe (2003), pp. 48–49. He then started at Eton College in January 1911.Aster 1976, p. 4. There, he won a Divinity prize and excelled at cricket, rugby and rowing, winning House colours in the last.Alan Campbell-Johanson, Eden: The Making of a Statesman, Read Books, 2007, p. 9
Eden learned French and German on continental holidays and, as a child, is said to have spoken French better than English.Aster 1976, p. 3. Although Eden was able to converse with Adolf Hitler in German in February 1934 and with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in French at Geneva in 1954, he preferred, out of a sense of professionalism, to have interpreters translate at formal meetings.Thorpe 2003, p. 46.Rhodes James 1986, p. 136.
Although Eden later claimed to have had no interest in politics until the early 1920s, his biographer writes that his teenage letters and diaries "only really come to life" when discussing the subject. He was a strong, partisan Conservative, thinking his protectionist father "a fool" in November 1912 for trying to block his free-trade supporting uncle from a Parliamentary candidacy. He rejoiced in the defeat of Charles Masterman at a by-election in May 1914Rhodes James misdates this to May 1913. Eden wrote to his mother about the "by elections" that month – the Conservatives also won the 1914 North East Derbyshire by-election that month. and once astonished his mother on a train journey by telling her the MP and the size of his majority for each constituency through which they passed.Rhodes James 1986, p. 26. By 1914 he was a member of the Eton Society ("Pop").Rhodes James 1986, p. 27. ("Pop" is a self-selecting social club of senior Eton boys, who are permitted to wear coloured waistcoats.)
First World War During the First World 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. Their uncle Robin was later shot down and captured whilst serving with the Royal Flying Corps.Aster 1976, pp. 5–8.
Volunteering for service in the British Army, like many others of his generation, Eden served with the 21st (Service) Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps (Yeoman Rifles) (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. He was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant on 2 November 1915 (antedated to 29 September 1915). His battalion transferred to the Western Front on 4 May 1916 as part of the 41st Division. On 31 May 1916, Eden's younger brother, Midshipman William Nicholas Eden, was killed in action, aged 16, on board during the Battle of Jutland. He is commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial. His brother-in-law, Lord Brooke, was wounded during the war.
One summer night in 1916, near Ploegsteert, Eden had to lead a small raid into an enemy trench to kill or capture enemy soldiers 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, and 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, of which he made little mention in his political career.Rhodes James 1986, pp. 43–44.
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." On 3 October, he was appointed an adjutant, with the rank of temporary lieutenant for the duration of that appointment. At the age of 19, he was the youngest adjutant on the Western Front.
Eden's MC was gazetted in the 1917 Birthday Honours list. His battalion fought at Messines Ridge in June 1917. On 1 July 1917 Eden was confirmed as a temporary lieutenant, relinquishing his appointment as adjutant three days later. His battalion fought in the first few days of the Third Battle of Ypres (31 July – 4 August). Between 20 and 23 September 1917 his battalion spent a few days on coastal defence on the Franco-Belgian border.
On 19 November Eden was transferred to the General Staff as a General Staff Officer Grade 3 (GSO3), with the temporary rank of captain. He served at Second Army HQ between mid-November 1917 and 8 March 1918, missing out on service in Italy (as the 41st Division had been transferred there after the Italian Second Army was defeated at the Battle of Caporetto). Eden returned to the Western Front as a major German offensive was clearly imminent, only for his former battalion to be disbanded to help alleviate the British Army's acute manpower shortage. Although David Lloyd George, then the British prime minister, was one of the few politicians of whom Eden reported frontline 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.Rhodes James 1986, p. 52.
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.Rhodes James 1986, p. 55. 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."Aster 1976, pp. 20–21. On 26 May 1918, he was appointed brigade major of the 198th Infantry Brigade, part of the 66th Division. At the age of 20, Eden was the youngest brigade major in the British Army.