Anthony and Clarissa Eden on their wedding day, 15 August 1952

Anne Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon (née Spencer-Churchill, 28 June 1920) is the widow of Sir Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon (1897-1977), who was British Prime Minister 1955-7. She married Eden in 1952, becoming Lady Eden in 1954 when he was made a Knight of the Garter and Countess of Avon in 1961 on his elevation to the peerage. Image File history File links Anthony_and_Clarissa_Eden. ... Image File history File links Anthony_and_Clarissa_Eden. ... June 28 is the 179th day of the year (180th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 186 days remaining. ... 1920 (MCMXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January January 3 - Babe Ruth is traded by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees for $125,000, the largest sum ever paid for a player at that time. ... Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC (June 12, 1897– January 14, 1977), British politician, was Foreign Secretary for three periods between 1935 and 1955, including World War II and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 to 1957. ... The Prime Minister is in practice the most important political office in the United Kingdom. ... A garter is one of the Orders most recognisable insignia. ...

Antecedents

Lady Avon (by which title she is referred to throughout this article) is the daughter of Major Jack Spencer-Churchill (1880-1947), the younger brother of Winston Churchill, and Lady Gwendoline Bertie (1885-1941), daughter of the 7th Earl of Abingdon. She is thus the niece of Winston Churchill, who was Prime Minister 1940-5 and 1951-5 and granddaughter of Lord Randolph Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1886-7. Her paternal great-grandfather was the 7th Duke of Marlborough and her maternal great-great-grandfather, the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry ^[1], half-brother of the 2nd Marquess, who, as Viscount Castlereagh, was Foreign Secretary during the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Major John Strange Spencer-Churchill, DSO (4 February 1880 - 23 February 1947) was the son of Lord Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill and Jennie Jerome, and brother of Winston Churchill. ... This article is becoming very long. ... Montagu Arthur Bertie, 7th Earl of Abingdon (13th May 1836 - 10th March 1928) was the fifth child of Montagu Bertie, 6th Earl of Abingdon and Elizabeth Lavinia Vernon-Harcourt. ... Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill (13 February 1849 – 24 January 1895) was a British statesman. ... His Grace The Duke of Marlborough John Winston Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough (2 June 1822 - 4 July 1883); English statesman. ... Charles William Stewart, later Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, KG, GCB, GCH, PC (18 May 1778 – 6 March 1854) was a British soldier, politician and nobleman, the son (by his second wife) of the 1st Marquess of Londonderry, and half-brother to Lord Castlereagh. ... Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, (June 18, 1769 - August 12, 1822), known until 1821 by his courtesy title of Viscount Castlereagh, was an Anglo-Irish politician born in Dublin who represented the United Kingdom at the Congress of Vienna. ... The Congress of Vienna by Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 1819. ...

Early life

Lady Avon studied art in Paris in 1937 and philosophy in Oxford, where she became associated with, among other leading academics, Isaiah Berlin and Maurice Bowra ^[2]. During the Second World War she decoded ciphers in the Communications Department of the Foreign Office, where her future husband was the Secretary of State from 1940-5. Sir Isaiah Berlin, OM, (June 6, 1909 – November 5, 1997) was a political philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal thinkers of the 20th century. ... Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra (April 8, 1898 – July 4, 1971) was an English classical scholar, teacher, and wit. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... This article is about algorithms for encryption and decryption. ... The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is the United Kingdom government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom abroad. ...

After the war Lady Avon worked at London Films for the producer Sir Alexander Korda, who she thought made "terrible mistakes without really knowing what has happened" ^[3], and as a reviewer for the fashion magazine Vogue. As a result, she widened her circle of influential friends and contacts beyond the aristocratic and political milieu with which she already had close connections. As one of Anthony Eden's biographers put it, she was "equally at home in the worlds of Hatfield and Fitzrovia" ^[4]. London Films was a British film studio founded in 1932 by Alexander Korda. ... Alexander Korda (September 16, 1893 - January 23, 1956) was a film director and producer, a leading figure in the British film industry and the founder of London Films. ... Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine published in several countries around the world. ... The great hall. ... Fitzrovia is an area of central London. ...

Friends and acquaintances

Glimpses of Lady Avon's life as a single woman, for example, in diaries and other reminiscencies, are quite extensive. She herself has not published a memoir, having indicated to former Labour Member of Parliament Woodrow, Lord Wyatt that such a volume would appear only after her death ^[5]. However, it was reported in 2006 that the publisher Weidenfeld had acquired Lady Avon's memoirs, to be edited by Cate Haste ^[6]. The Labour Party has been, since its founding in the early 20th century, the main democratic socialist[1] political party in the United Kingdom. ... A Member of Parliament, or MP, is a representative elected by the voters of an electoral district to a parliament; in the Westminster system, specifically to the lower house. ... Woodrow Lyle Wyatt, Baron Wyatt of Weeford (July 4, 1918 – December 7, 1997), was a British Labour politician, published author, journalist and broadcaster. ...

Having lost both parents by her mid twenties, Lady Avon was comparatively independent for a young woman of her time. In later years she apparently remarked to Wyatt on "how much more restricted girls were when she was young", while conceding that she herself had had her first affair at seventeen with a "man who was quite well-known and … still alive [in 1986]" ^[7]. She had many devoted admirers, an early "ardent suitor" being Sir Colville Barclay ^[8], diplomat and painter, who was stepson of Lord Vansittart, former permanent head of the Foreign Office ^[9]. Lady Avon was quoted by Wyatt as having told him that she resisted the amorous advances of her friend, Duff Cooper, former Government Minister and British Ambassador in Paris 1944-7 ("I was the only woman who he never got more than a peck on the cheek from" ^[10]). She informed Cooper in 1947, following a weekend in the country with Anthony Eden and the French Ambassador to Britain, that Eden "never stops trying to make love to her" ^[11]. Robert Gilbert Vansittart (1881 - 1957) was a significant British diplomat. ... Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich (February 22, 1890 - January 1, 1954), known universally as Duff Cooper, was a British diplomat, Cabinet member and acclaimed author. ...

Among Lady Avon's many other friends, a number of whom were some years older than she, were novelists Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell, painter Lucien Freud and choreographer Frederick Ashton. Photographer Cecil Beaton, 16 years her senior, treated her as a special confidante and introduced her to the reclusive Swedish actress Greta Garbo ^[12]. Lady Avon was a long-standing friend of Anne Fleming, née Rothermere, wife of novelist Ian Fleming; she and composer and playwright Noel Coward became godparents in 1952 to the Flemings’ son Caspar ^[13]. In later years, as a widow, she was evidently close to the influential solicitor and adviser Lord Goodman ^[14]. Evelyn Waugh, as photographed in 1940 by Carl Van Vechten Arthur Evelyn St. ... Anthony Dymoke Powell (December 21, 1905 - March 28, 2000) was a writer best known for his A Dance to the Music of Time duodecalogy published between 1951 and 1975. ... Lucian Freud OM (born December 8, 1922) is a British painter and printmaker. ... Sir Frederick William Mallandaine Ashton (September 17, 1904 - October 18, 1988) began his career as a dancer but is largely remembered as a choreographer. ... Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton (January 14, 1904 – January 18, 1980) was an English fashion and portrait photographer and a stage and costume designer for films and the theatre. ... Greta Garbo (September 17, 1905 – April 15, 1990) was a Swedish actress, by reputation one of the greatest and most inscrutable movie stars ever to be produced by MGM and the Hollywood studio system. ... Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (May 28, 1908 – August 12, 1964) was an English author and journalist, best remembered for writing the James Bond series of novels as well as the childrens story, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. ... Sir Noel Peirce Coward (spelling his forename Noël with the diaeresis was an affectation of later life) (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973) was an English actor, playwright, and composer of popular music. ... Arnold Goodman CH QC (Hon) (1913–1995), British lawyer and political advisor. ...

Relationship with Anthony Eden

Lady Avon first met her future husband at Cranborne, Dorset (home of the future 5th Marquess of Salisbury) in 1936 when she was sixteen. Already famous at the time for his elegant attire and Homburg hat, she was struck by his tweed pinstriped trousers ^[15]. There was some further contact during the war by virtue of the circles in which they both moved and through her relationship with Winston Churchill, who became Prime Minister in 1940. R .A. Butler, then a junior Minister, recalled a dinner party in Eden’s flat above the Foreign Office, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, at which, attempting to defuse an argument about Churchill’s and Lord Beaverbrook’s respective motivation during the Abdication crisis of 1936, Lady Avon, just turned twenty-one, had proclaimed with patent improbability that she had three favourites, King Edward VIII, King Leopold III of the Belgians and the aviator Charles Lindbergh ^[16]. (All three men, for various reasons, would not have appealed much to Churchill at that point in the war.) Cranborne is a village in east Dorset, England. ... The Right Honourable Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury, KG (August 27, 1893–February 23, 1972) was a grandson of the great 3rd Marquess. ... An “Anthony Eden hat (or simply an “Anthony Eden”) was a silk-brimmed, black felt Homburg of the kind favoured in the 1930s by Anthony Eden, later 1st Earl of Avon (1897-1977), a Cabinet Minister in the British National Government, who was Lord Privy Seal 1934-5 and Foreign... This article is becoming very long. ... Richard Austen Butler, Baron Butler of Saffron Walden, KG, CH, PC, DL (9 December 1902 – 8 March 1982), who invariably signed his name R. A. Butler and was familiarly known as Rab, was a British Conservative politician. ... Sir William Maxwell Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (May 25, 1879 - June 9, 1964) was a Canadian–British business tycoon and politician. ... Like King Henry VIII of England, whose wish to marry Anne Boleyn in the 1530s rocked his kingdom, King Edward VIII created a crisis for the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth in the 1930s when he wished to marry Wallis Simpson: many have argued that the problem for Edward... King Edward VIII King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, King of Ireland Emperor of India His Majesty King Edward VIII, (Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David), later His Royal Highness The Duke of Windsor (23 June 1894 – 28 May 1972) was the second British monarch of the... Leopold III, Leopold Philippe Charles Albert Meinrad Hubertus Marie Miguel (November 3, 1901 – September 25, 1983) reigned as King of the Belgians from 1934 until 1951, when he abdicated in favour of his Heir Apparent, his son Baudouin. ... Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. ...

Marriage

A more defined relationship with Eden, who was 23 years older than Lady Avon, developed gradually after they had sat next to each other at a dinner party in 1947 ^[17]. In 1950 Eden was divorced from his first wife, Beatrice, née Beckett (1905-57). Although she was a Roman Catholic and her church was opposed to divorce, Lady Avon nevertheless married Eden, who had become Foreign Secretary again in 1951, in a civil ceremony at Caxton Hall, London on 14 August 1952. This event drew large crowds, prompting Harold Macmillan, Minister of Hosuing, to note that "it's extraordinary how much 'glamour' [Eden] still has and how popular he is" ^[18]. There was criticism of the marriage in the Church Times and from some others in the Anglican church, including the Bishop of Sydney, Australia, who drew parallels with Edward VIII's having given up the throne to marry an American divorcée. Macmillan, among others, thought such comparisons unfair: "Miss Churchill cannot be compared with Mrs Simpson, who had had two husbands" ^[19] However, Lady Avon's decision drew also the opprobrium of her friend Evelyn Waugh, a strident convert to Catholicism, who, a few years earlier, had repeatedly berated the poet John Betjeman for his Anglo-Catholic beliefs ^[20]. The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ... Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986), was a British Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. ... The term Anglican describes those people and churches following the religious traditions of the Church of England, especially following the Reformation. ... This article is about the metropolitan area in Australia. ... Wallis, Duchess of Windsor and the Duke of Windsor on their wedding day Bessie Wallis Warfield, more widely known as Wallis Simpson and later The Duchess of Windsor (June 19, 1896–April 24, 1986) was the wife of Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII of the... Sir John Betjeman CBE (28 August 1906–19 May 1984) was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Whos Who as a poet and hack. He was born to a middle-class family in Edwardian London. ... ...

On the eve on the wedding, John Colville, a long-time private secretary of Winston Churchill, who was part of the same social “set” as his niece, recorded in his diary that Lady Avon, who was staying at Churchill's home at Chartwell, Kent, was "very beautiful, but ... still strange and bewildering". He added that Churchill "feels avuncular to his orphaed niece, gave her a cheque for £500 and told me that he thought she had a most unusual personality" ^[21]. Sir John Colville, CB, CVO, was born 28 January 1915. ... Chartwell, located two miles south of Westerham, Kent, England, was the home of Winston Churchill. ...

The marriage to Eden, which lasted until his death in 1977, was, by all accounts, a happy one, though Lady Avon miscarried in 1954 ^[22] and there were no children. Eden's surviving son from his first marriage, Nicholas, who succeeded him as 2nd Earl of Avon, was a Minister in Margaret Thatcher's Government in the 1980s, but died of AIDS in 1985. Nicholas Eden, 2nd Earl of Avon (1930-1985), British politician and son of Prime Minister Anthony Eden. ... Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (born 13 October 1925) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. ... Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS or Aids) is a collection of symptoms and infections in humans resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). ...

Eden's premiership

The first five years of the marriage were dominated by Eden's political career and the effects of a botched operation on his gall bladder in 1953 which caused lasting problems. However, Lady Eden maintained many of her wider acquaintances. For example, Cecil Beaton and Greta Garbo visited 10 Downing Street at her invitation in October 1956, the month in which the Suez Crisis, which was to bring Eden's career to a dramatic close, reached its height. They drank vodka and ice and Beaton recorded Lady Avon's observation that her husband was kept awake by the sound of motor scooters ^[23], which were growing in popularity among young people in the 1950s. // Overview Number Ten Downing street is the official residence of the First Lord of Her Majesty’s Treasury and Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. ... Combatants Israel United Kingdom France Egypt Commanders Moshe Dayan Charles Keightley Pierre Barjot Gamal Abdel Nasser Strength 175,000 Israeli 45,000 British 34,000 French 300,000 Casualties 177 Israeli KIA 16 British KIA 91 British WIA 10 French KIA 33 French WIA 1,650 KIA 4,900 WIA... A typical mid 1980s twist and go scooter. ...

Eden had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister on 6 April 1955 and, shortly afterwards, won a general election in which his Conservative Party polled the largest percentage of the popular vote recorded between 1945 and the present day. Colville noted that, at a dinner, attended by Queen Elizabeth II, to mark Churchill’s retirement, the Duchess of Westminster had put her foot through Lady Avon’s train, causing the Duke of Edinburgh to remark, "that's torn it, in more than one sense" ^[24]. The Conservative Party (officially the Conservative & Unionist Party) is currently the second largest political party in the United Kingdom in terms of sitting Members of Parliament (MPs), and the largest in terms of public membership. ... Elizabeth II in an official portrait as Queen of Canada (on the occasion of her Golden Jubilee in 2002, wearing the Sovereigns badges of the Order of Canada and the Order of Military Merit) Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary) (born 21 April 1926), styled HM The... The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, (Philip Mountbatten; born Prince Philippos of Greece and Denmark, 10 June 1921) is the husband and consort of Queen Elizabeth II. Originally a Prince of Greece and Denmark, Prince Philip abandoned those titles to serve in the Royal Navy, but did not renounce them. ...

"The Suez Canal flowing through my drawing room"

Eden’s premiership lasted less than two years. In the humiliating aftermath of Suez in 1956, Lady Avon's most famous public remark to a group of Conservative woman that, "in the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing room", was widely reported ^[25]. The damage caused by events to the Prime Minister's already frail health persuaded the Edens to seek a month’s rest cure at "Goldeneye", Ian Flerming’s home in Jamaica, where they were temporary neighbours of Noel Coward. Goldeneye was the estate that James Bond creator, Ian Fleming stayed at every year whilst he was on his leave from the Sunday Times. ...

They returned to England just before Christmas 1956 and Eden resigned as Prime Minister on 9 January 1957. When Harold Macmillan, with whom Eden had had a difficult relationship ^[26], was appointed as his successor in preference to R. A. Butler, Lady Avon wrote to Butler that she thought politics "a beastly profession ... and how greatly I admire your dignity and good humour" ^[27]. Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986), was a British Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. ...

Eden's retirement and beyond

Eden had been told by doctors that his life might be in danger if he remained in office. In the event he was to live for another twenty years. The Edens' home was at Alvediston, Wiltshire, where he died on 14 January 1977 and is buried. Alvediston is a village and civil parish in the Salisbury district of Wiltshire, England, with a population of 91 (2001 census). ...

Lady Avon moved to an apartment in London in the 1980s. After her husband's death, she invited first Robert Rhodes James and later D. R. Thorpe to write official biographies of him. Published in 1986 and 2003 respectively, both offered a broadly sympathic view of Eden’s career and were generally well received by critics. Between them they did much to help restore Eden’s reputation, which had taken such a battering during the final months of his premiership. Sir Robert Rhodes James (10 April 1933–1999) was a British historian and Conservative member of parliament. ... D. R. Thorpe (born 1943) is an historian and biographer who has written biographies of two British Prime Ministers of the mid 20th century, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Sir Anthony Eden. ...

Longevity

Lady Avon was only 36 when her husband resigned as Prime Minister and a widow by her mid fifties. As such she has enjoyed unusual longevity for a Prime Ministerial spouse, contributing, for example, to a television documentary in 2006 by Cherie Blair, wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, about Prime Ministers’ wives ^[28] and to one in the same year marking the fiftieth anniversary of Suez ^[29]. She has outlived four of the seven spouses (Lady Dorothy Macmillan, Lady Home, Lady Callaghan and Sir Denis Thatcher) who succeeded her. Cherie Blair in full Queens Counsel ceremonial dress. ... Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953)[1] is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, Leader of the UK Labour Party, and Member of the UK Parliament for the constituency of Sedgefield in North East England. ...

Notes