Clarissa Eden
This article cites its page references.(May 2014) ) |
The Countess of Avon | |
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Born | Anne Clarissa Spencer-Churchill 28 June 1920 Kensington, London, England |
Died | 15 November 2021 London, England | (aged 101)
Known for | Spouse of the prime minister of the United Kingdom (1955–1957) |
Spouse | |
Parent |
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Relatives |
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Anne Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon (
On the death of
Early life
Clarissa Spencer-Churchill was born in 1920, the daughter of
Spencer-Churchill was born at her parents' house in the Cromwell Road, Kensington, London. She was educated at Kensington Preparatory School and then at Downham School, Hatfield Heath, "a fashionable boarding school ... orientated to horses",[4] which she disliked and left early without any formal qualifications.[5][page needed] Seventy years later she said she had also felt the need to get away from home—"I just wanted to get out from under the whole thing of being loved too much".[6]
Paris, Tuscany and London (1937–1939)
In 1937 Spencer-Churchill studied art in Paris.
In the summer of 1937, Spencer-Churchill accompanied
When Spencer-Churchill returned to London, she enrolled at the
Among those with whom Spencer-Churchill danced at that year's Liberal
In 1939 Spencer-Churchill spent another four months in Paris and, in August of that year, travelled to Romania as a guest of the novelist Elizabeth Bibesco and her husband Antoine (Elizabeth's mother, Margot Asquith, having been left distraught after her daughter visited her in London earlier in the year[18][page needed][c]). Spencer-Churchill only just managed to return to England—on one of the last flights out of Bucharest—before the start of the Second World War.[9][page needed]
Second World War: Oxford and the Foreign Office
In 1940, encouraged by economist
When Spencer-Churchill moved back to London, she decoded
Post-war
After the war Spencer-Churchill worked at
Spencer-Churchill also worked for the short-lived
As a result of this eclectic early career, she widened her circle of friends and contacts beyond those in society and politics with whom 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",[7] while a reviewer of her memoir wrote that "few lives can have touched so many social worlds, or graced them so elegantly".[32] Even so, the future Lady Avon did not impress everyone: after the future prime minister Margaret Thatcher met her at a Conservative Party ball in 1954, she wrote dismissively to her sister, "Mrs Anthony Eden received us. Really she is a most colourless personality".[33][f]
2007 memoir
Glimpses of Spencer-Churchill's life as a
A photograph on the
Friends and acquaintances
Early admirers
Having lost both parents by her mid-twenties, Spencer-Churchill was comparatively independent for a young woman. In later years, she remarked to Woodrow Wyatt on "how much more restricted" girls were when she was young while conceding that she had had her first affair at 17 with a "man who was quite well-known and ... still alive [in 1986]".
Wyatt quoted Lady Avon as having told him that she had resisted the amorous advances of Duff Cooper, wartime information minister and the British ambassador in Paris (1944–1947), who, thirty years her senior, had also been a friend of her mother:[42][page needed][g] "I was the only woman who he never got more than a peck on the cheek from".[44][h] She informed Cooper in 1947, following a weekend in the country with Anthony Eden, at which the only other guest was the French ambassador to Britain, that Eden "never stops trying to make love to her".[48][page needed][i] When Cooper was raised to the peerage (eventually choosing the title Viscount Norwich), he sought Spencer-Churchill's views as to a title—"Think, child, think ... Have you any suggestions? (not funny ones)"[50][page needed]—and she was the recipient of the last letter that he wrote (from White's club) shortly before his death at sea on New Year's Day, 1954.[50][page needed]
Other friends
Among the future Lady Avon's many other friends, several of whom were some years older than she, were the novelists
Lady Avon thought the writer and horticulturalist
Avon was a long-standing friend of
Relationship with Anthony Eden
Spencer-Churchill first met her future husband at
Winston Churchill and the wartime link
There was further contact during the war, under the circles in which she and Eden moved and through her uncle
Marriage to Eden
A more defined relationship with Eden, who was a married man 23 years older than Spencer-Churchill, developed gradually after they had sat next to each other at a dinner party in about 1947. Eden had been monopolised for much of the meal by a woman on his other side and afterwards, in an undertone, invited Spencer-Churchill out to dinner.
Attitudes to the marriage
Until 2019, Eden was one
On the eve of the wedding, John Colville, a long-time private secretary of Churchill, who in his younger days had been part of the same social "set" as Churchill's niece, recorded in his diary that Spencer-Churchill, 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 orphaned niece, gave her a cheque for £500 and told me that he thought she had a most unusual personality".[78] According to the future Lady Avon herself, Churchill's wife Clementine thought her "too independent and totally unsuitable",[79] while the marriage is said to have exacerbated the antagonism towards Eden of the Churchills' often wayward son Randolph, who, having initially defended his cousin to Waugh, gave her "two years to knock [Eden] into shape".[80] His subsequent attacks on Eden in the press culminated in a scathing biography, The Rise and Fall of Sir Anthony Eden (1959).[citation needed]
The issues relating to the Edens' marriage resurfaced in 1955 when Eden was prime minister. In that year,
Townsend reflected in the 1970s that:Eden could not fail to sympathise with the Princess, all the more so that while his own second marriage had incurred no penalty, either for him or his wife, he had to warn the Princess that my second marriage – to her – would [mean] she would have to renounce her royal rights, functions and income.
— Townsend (1978, p. 224)
Married life
The Edens' marriage, which lasted until his death on 14 January 1977, was, by all accounts, an extremely happy one.[83]
The first five years of her marriage were dominated by Eden's political career and by the effects of a botched operation on his
Historian
Lady Eden miscarried in 1954, and there were no children.[90] Her stepson, Nicholas, Eden's surviving son from his first marriage, who succeeded him as 2nd Earl of Avon, served as Under-Secretary of State for Energy in Margaret Thatcher's government in the 1980s, but died of AIDS in 1985. At this point, the earldom became extinct.
Eden's premiership
Churchill had told Lady Eden, following her honeymoon in 1952, that he wanted to give up the premiership.[91][page needed] However, it was not until 6 April 1955 that Eden succeeded him as prime minister, shortly afterwards winning a general election in which the Conservative Party polled the largest percentage of the popular vote recorded by a party between 1945 and the present day. Colville noted that, at a dinner attended by the Queen to mark Churchill's retirement, the Duchess of Westminster had put her foot through Lady Eden's train, causing the monarch's consort, the Duke of Edinburgh, to remark, "that's torn it, in more than one sense".[92]
Eden's premiership lasted less than two years. For much of this period, Eden was the subject of hostility from elements of the Conservative press, notably
Chatelaine at Downing Street and Chequers
As hostess at 10 Downing Street, Lady Eden oversaw the organisation of official receptions. She brought in new caterers, causing US secretary of state John Foster Dulles to lose a bet with a fellow dinner guest that he knew "exactly what every course is going to be".[100] Because the Edens' tenure was so short, Lady Eden's plans to return the fabric and furniture of the house to the styles of the 1730s, when it was built, were never realised.[101]
Lady Eden was not very fond of Chequers, though she did take a keen interest in the garden and grounds, introducing old-fashioned roses and increasing the range of
In April 1956, Lady Eden hosted a dinner at Chequers for the visiting Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin. Khrushchev noted that Lady Eden's (sober) behaviour contradicted a briefing from the Soviet embassy in London that she shared some of Churchill's "traits in the matter of drinking". Over dinner (when, according to his hostess, he ate nothing[9][page needed] despite his reputation for eating and drinking greedily[106][t]), he responded rather bluntly to her question about the range of Soviet missiles that "they could easily reach your island and quite a bit farther".[u] The following morning, Khrushchev mistook Lady Eden's room for Bulganin's but, having provoked a cry after almost walking in on her, beat a hasty retreat and did not identify himself. He confided later in Bulganin, with whom he "had a good laugh over [the] incident".[108]
Suez Crisis
As the
"The Suez Canal flowing through my drawing room"
In the humiliating aftermath of the crisis in 1956, Lady Eden's most famous public remark to a group of Conservative women that, "in the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing room", was widely reported.[112] The future Lady Avon later described this observation as "silly, really idiotic",[113] though it remains probably the most quoted utterance of the whole crisis.[original research?] One example of its durability was a journalist's observation some 54 years later, with reference to the Iraq War of 2003, that "if, as Clarissa Eden remarked, the Suez Canal ran through her drawing room, Iraq and the decisions that flowed from it still haunt [the] Labour [Party] and stir up antipathies and discomforts".[114] Another instance was in 2013 when options for airport expansion around London were being debated: The Times newspaper cited Avon's words in 2011 in connection with a call by the outgoing Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus (later Lord) O'Donnell for prime ministerial spouses to receive greater support from public funds: "In a constitutional monarchy, the consort of the prime minister is not an official role ... Yet, as the Countess of Avon so vividly pointed out, it can be impossible to keep public scrutiny at bay altogether".[115][verification needed] In Avon's view, both she and her husband "were quite naive about how the press works. Neither of us should have been, but we were."[116]
In his memoirs, Anthony Eden recalled that on several occasions during the crisis, he found time to sit in his wife's drawing room, whose
Political influence
During this period, some thought they detected undue influence by Lady Eden over her husband. For example,
In private correspondence just after Suez, the Oxford historian
Protective influence
Less dramatically, there were suggestions that Anthony Eden's touchiness and over-sensitivity to criticism, characteristics frequently remarked upon by colleagues,
Eden paid tribute to his wife's adaptation of their domestic arrangements to meet the "unsteady requirements" of this period, noting that his digestion took less kindly to them.
Some of Lady Eden's friends may have concealed their true views about Suez. For example, Isaiah Berlin assured "dearest Clarissa" that Eden had acted with "great moral splendour", describing his stance as "very brave", "very patriotic" and "absolutely just",
Aftermath of Suez
Goldeneye
The damage caused by the Suez Crisis to the Prime Minister's already frail health persuaded the Edens to seek a month's
Installed in Jamaica after a good deal of secrecy and close liaison between Downing Street and Ian Fleming's secretary, Una Trueblood,
Eden's resignation
The Edens flew back to England just before Christmas 1956. A young witness of their departure from Kingston airport recalled Lady Eden looking "glacial" and her husband pale.[163][verification needed] Lady Eden noted that, on their return, "everyone [was] looking at us with thoughtful eyes".[164] Early in January 1957, the Edens stayed with the Queen at Sandringham, where Eden informed her of his intention to resign as prime minister.[165][page needed] Eden tendered his resignation formally at Buckingham Palace on 9 January. When Harold Macmillan was appointed his successor in preference to R. A. Butler, Lady Eden wrote to Butler (whom two years earlier she had described in her diary as "curiously unnatural"[166]) that she thought politics "a beastly profession ... and how greatly I admire your dignity and good humour".[69][page needed][af] (In 1952 she had told Duff Cooper that she thought modern politics something of a "farce".[50][page needed])
Macmillan's biographer Alistair Horne noted that, of the various animosities that arose before and during Macmillan's premiership, it was the "loyal wives", among whom he counted Lady Eden and Lady Butler, who "tended most to keep [them] alive".[168] Although there is evidence of a long-standing and lasting rift between Eden and Macmillan,[169][page needed] Eden himself maintained "a friendly (if not conspicuously warm) relationship" with his successor,[168] often being used as a "sounding board" by Macmillan who occasionally lunched with the Edens at their home.[170] Lady Eden, on the other hand, was said to have been consistently vitriolic about Macmillan[168] and recalled to one of Eden's biographers that Churchill had found him "too 'viewy'".[171] There is some evidence that, following Suez, Macmillan had briefed sections of the press that he intended to retire, whereas his true intention had been to displace Eden as prime minister,[172] and, as late as 2007, the future Lady Avon criticised his behaviour as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the crisis, claiming that he had been "too hasty" in using an American threat to withhold a loan from the International Monetary Fund as "an excuse to back down" from military action and had wept "crocodile tears" at Eden's resignation.[116][ag]
Shortly after Eden's resignation, he and Lady Eden sailed to New Zealand for a further break. Their
Eden's retirement and death
Doctors had told Eden that his life might be in danger if he remained in office. However, he was to live for another twenty years. The Avons' home was at Alvediston Manor, Wiltshire, where he died on 14 January 1977 and is buried. The last entry in Eden's diary, dated 11 September 1976, had read, "[e]xquisite small vase of crimson glory buds & mignonette from beloved C[larissa]."[180]
When Eden was taken mortally ill with liver cancer, he and Lady Avon had just spent their final Christmas together at Hobe Sound, Florida, as guests of former New York governor W. Averell Harriman, an elder statesman of the Democratic Party, and his English-born wife Pamela. (Mrs Harriman was Lady Avon's exact contemporary, a débutante of 1938[12][ai] who had also taken a room at the Dorchester during the Second World War.[9][page needed] She had previously been married to Lady Avon's cousin Randolph Churchill[181][page needed] and in the 1990s was US president Bill Clinton's ambassador to Paris, where she died in 1997.) The Avons were flown back to Britain in a Royal Air Force VC-10 that was diverted to Miami after Prime Minister James Callaghan had been alerted to his health situation by Pamela Harriman's son, Winston.[182]
Widowhood
After her husband's death, Lady Avon received many tributes for her devoted care in the later stages of his life. She moved to an apartment in London in the 1980s. She invited firstly
Lady Avon remained in touch with many influential friends. For example, in the lead-up to the
In 1994, 17 years after her husband's death, Lady Avon unveiled a bust of Eden at the Foreign Office. In 2013 she attended a memorial service for Sir
Longevity
Lady Avon was the youngest wife of an incumbent prime minister in the twentieth century.[citation needed] She was only 36 when her husband resigned and was widowed at 56. She outlived five later prime ministerial spouses and witnessed the administrations of 13 subsequent prime ministers.[original research?] By contrast, Lady Dorothy Macmillan was 57 when her husband succeeded Eden and 63 when he resigned, dying just three years later; her husband outlived her by 20 years.[5][page needed] As such, Avon enjoyed unusual longevity for a prime ministerial spouse, contributing, for example, to a television documentary by Cherie Blair in 2005 about prime ministers' wives[189] and to a three-part series the following year marking the 50th anniversary of Suez. In the latter, she recalled, among other things, Eden's disillusion with the lack of American support for British policy in 1956.[190] The critic A. A. Gill was among those who praised Avon's erudite performance in the Blair documentary ("bright as a button") while sensing that she appeared not entirely to approve of Cherie Blair.[191]
Avon was 87 when her memoir appeared in 2007. A journalist who interviewed her and her editor, Cate Haste, observed that Avon "seems slight and wan, as if painted in watercolour rather than oil" but described her as "vigorous and knowing" in conversation.
Avon died on 15 November 2021 at her home in London,
In popular culture
This section needs additional citations for verification. (February 2022) |
Lady Avon was played by
Arms
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References
Notes
- VE Day in 1945, Norton met the future 3rd Viscount Astor and was engaged to him within a week.[15]
- ^ Lady Avon later reflected that it turned out Maclean "wasn't a proper Liberal boy either".[16]
- ^ Due to the war, mother and daughter never met again and died within four months of each other in 1945. Elizabeth's daughter, Priscilla (1920–2004), to whom Asquith dedicated her second volume of memoirs in 1933—"one of the loves of my life"[19]—escaped Romania by hitchhiking to Lebanon. She, too, never saw her mother nor her grandmother again.[20]
- Oxford don remarked to Paul Johnson, then an undergraduate: "That's Ayer. Might have been a great philosopher. Ruined by sex."[24]
- ^ Lady Diana Cooper, who, with her husband Duff Cooper, also had an upper room at the Dorchester, wrote to her son in Canada that "the All Clear wouldn't go and the wakefulness was supported by the watcher on the Dorchester roof walking up and down so very near my head. It kept me aware of how little covering there was above us".[26][page needed]
- ^ In fact, it might have been said of both women[original research?] that, as Moore (2013, p. 128) wrote of Thatcher's period at the bar in the 1950s: "Without the slightest hint of impropriety, she ... sought and enjoyed the company of clever, older men." Thatcher was Leader of the Conservative Party when Anthony Eden died in 1977, and Lady Avon had corresponded with her about her husband's declining health.[9][page needed]
- ^ Cooper and his wife Lady Diana had, like Spencer-Churchill, taken a room at the Dorchester Hotel in the early years of the Second World War.[43]
- Pinna Cruger (1896–1950), wife of a millionaire haberdasher, Bertram Cruger, and possibly mistress, for a time, of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, "backed off Duff Cooper when she detected that he was happily married".[46] Bertram Cruger was an admirer of Cooper's wife Diana, the two having met in New York City.[47]
- ^ Charmley (1986) quotes this reference to Eden, but protects Lady Avon's identity, noting that "the name is given in Duff's diary".[page needed] In 1983, when Conservative Party chairman Cecil Parkinson informed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that he had been having an affair with his secretary, her initial reaction is said to have been, "What's the problem? They tell me Anthony Eden jumped into bed with every good-looking woman he ever met".[49]
- ^ Avon herself recalled that, when she first spotted Heber-Percy wandering around the grounds of Faringdon and asked who he was, Berners described him as "my agent",[55] although they were lovers.
- ^ Heywood Hill, which bore the name of its owner, opened in 1936. Mitford initially worked as an assistant there but took over the running of it when Hill was called up for war service.[60][page needed]
- ^ Goodman was a major figure in the British artistic establishment. Kenneth Tynan described him in 1972 as "[t]he antibody in our time ... [N]ever [holding] elective office, he has wielded more power than anyone in the country, except the Prime Minister during the past decade".[63]
- ^ According to Gilbert (1983, p. 437), Churchill was in France on 31 May.[68]
- Philip Chetwode.[76] According to Wilson (2006, p. 94), Penelope's love for John Churchill had "waned".
- Princess Anne and so, in itself, renouncing her right of succession would have been primarily a technicality.[citation needed]
- ^ According to a more recent historian, Lady Pamela was "an able, ambitious woman who slaked her frustration at being denied formal responsibilities and power by outrushes of political malice".[95]
- ^ Pamela Berry was another of Lady Eden's acquaintances who had taken accommodation at the Dorchester Hotel during the Second World War.[96][page needed]
- ^ It is worth noting that, in 1962, Nancy Mitford, who had once been very close to Lady Pamela, wrote to Evelyn Waugh that "she is spoilt ... her faults are getting worse and she doesn't mellow".[98] In the same year, Waugh observed that "Pam joins Randolph [Churchill] among the legion of the damned" after she had betrayed a confidence in the columns of The Daily Telegraph.[60] Lady Pamela died in 1982, but there have been suggestions that, in 1988, a Telegraph obituary of Beryl Maudling, widow of Reginald Maudling, Eden's Minister of Supply and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Macmillan, was "unnecessarily spiteful" because, as Maudling's biographer put it, of "some personal matter connected with the Maudlings' relationship with the Berry family".[99]
- ^ Even so, Lady Dorothy, who, like Lady Eden, did not like Chequers much, complained to her daughter-in-law that "they would never let [me] plant anything ... they want me to plant pansies" ("and she didn't like pansies").[103]
- ^ Macmillan regarded such greed as an indication of Khruschev's inner character, rather as Anthony Eden had taken a similar view of Benito Mussolini's objectionable table manners in the 1930s.[107]
- ^ Khrushchev noted that Lady Eden "bit her tongue" at this answer, which he admitted was "a little rude".[108]
- ^ Whatever effect Lady Eden had on Eden's temperament, it has been far from uncommon for prime ministerial behaviour to be influenced by protective spouses.[original research?] Despite strong evidence of Sarah Brown's calming influence on her husband, Gordon Brown, who was prime minister from 2007 to 2010, it has been suggested that "her intense love and protection ... made her deeply angry when he was under attack, and this could heighten his paranoia about those who were seeking to do him down".[131] It is clear also that, at various stages before and during the Falklands War of 1982, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher received from her husband, Denis, the sort of moral support that it was difficult for others to provide.[132][pages needed]
- ^ Such working methods were by no means unique: Churchill frequently worked in bed and often slept in the afternoon. Monday, 29 December 1952, was the first working day after Christmas, and Eden's (and his wife's) remarks may, to an extent, have been tongue-in-cheek.[citation needed]
- ^ Berlin seems to have had a reputation for saying one thing to one person and something different to another.[136][verification needed]
- ^ Hamilton appears to have visited Fleming in Jamaica while he was writing From Russia, with Love, which was published in 1957.[citation needed]
- ^ As regards Chequers, Eden's wariness about its effect on his health was long-standing. In November 1942, at a delicate point in the Second World War, he confided to his diary: "I don't know why it is that Chequers never suits me. Cold still heavy ... and Rossdale's [his doctor's] cocaine makes me feel giddy".[146] The Soviet leader Khrushchev, whom the Edens entertained at Chequers in 1956, noted "an unpleasant odour and a sticky film all over everything inside the house" due to the burning of anthracite in iron stoves.[147]
- Alan Lennox-Boyd, who gave the impression that he himself wanted Goldeneye for a holiday.[149] Una Trueblood was probably the model for Mary Trueblood, a glamorous MI6 secretary in Fleming's Dr. No (1958).[citation needed]
- ^ Coward thought Goldenye looked like a medical centre and referred to it as "Goldeneye, nose and throat".[151] Coward recalled the contrast between the lifestyle of James Bond in Fleming's books and that at Goldeneye. He claimed that he used to cross himself before eating there because the food was so "abominable"—"his guests remembered all those delicious meals had put into his books".[152][page needed]
- ^ Blackwell (1912–2017), who Ann Fleming described as "my husband's Jamaican wife",[151] has often been cited as the inspiration for the character of Pussy Galore in Fleming's novel Goldfinger. She died at the age of 104.[relevant?] Her son Chris founded Island Records.[citation needed][relevant?]
- ^ Cannadine (2002, p. 285) refers to "a sojourn which did nothing for Eden's reputation but a great deal for Fleming's". Another factor in the success of the Bond books, a few years later, was the enthusiastic endorsement of US president John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert.[158][159] Allen Dulles, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was also a fan, exchanging copies of Bond novels with President Kennedy and adding his own comments in the margins.[160] The first Bond film, Dr. No, did not appear until 1962.
- ^ Rankin (2011, p. 333) has speculated that "the cultural snobbery of his wife, Ann, and her friends" may have told Fleming that "there was something suspect in the thriller genre ... that it was not the 99.99 per cent pure gold of proper literature".
- Lord Home observed that "politics is in some ways a nasty profession ...".[167]
- ^ US vice-president Richard Nixon was the source of Eisenhower's regrets.[173][failed verification] According to Jonathan Aitken, Macmillan advised Margaret Thatcher in 1982 to exclude the Chancellor of the Exchequer from her Falklands War Cabinet to avoid Treasury influence on decision making.[174]
- ^ According to one account, Prescott felt patronised by Eden during the voyage and retaliated by contriving "accidentally" to spill hot soup over Eden's crotch.[178][page needed]
- ^ The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, also a débutante in 1938, recalled Pamela Digby (as she then was) as "rather fat, fast and the butt of many teases".[12]
- ^ Kissinger was presumably referring to a possible consequence of Britain's evicting Argentine forces from the Falkland Islands, which they had invaded in April 1982, or of a political and economic backlash against American interests if the US publicly supported Britain.[citation needed]
- ^ Eden had been Foreign Secretary throughout Edward's short reign. Lady Avon also commented to Beaton on the Queen's "motherly and nannie-like tenderness" towards the Duchess at the funeral.[186]
- ^ Invitations to a comparable luncheon to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012 were restricted to (surviving) prime ministers and their spouses.[citation needed]
Citations
- ^ Kettle, Martin (8 June 2018). "'Acerbic and firm': Mary Wilson remembered fondly after death at 102". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 15 November 2021. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
Wilson's death makes the exclusive club of past or present prime ministerial consorts more exclusive than ever. Now there are just six of them. The oldest member is Clarissa Eden, widow of Anthony, who turns 98 this month.
- ^ Vickers, Hugo (30 June 2020). "The Countess of Avon at 100". International Churchill Society. Archived from the original on 15 November 2021. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
- ^ Cannadine 1994, p. 252, genealogical table of the Churchills.
- ^ a b Eden 2007, p. 11.
- ^ a b Booth & Haste 2004.
- ^ a b Booth & Haste 2004, p. 3.
- ^ a b c Thorpe 2003, p. 376.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 16.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Eden 2007.
- ^ a b Country Life, 8 September 2010.
- ^ a b Broad 1955, p. 205 .
- ^ a b c d Devonshire 2010, p. 85.
- ^ de Courcy 1989.
- ^ Trumpington 2014.
- ^ "Sarah Baring". The Daily Telegraph. 15 February 2013. Archived from the original on 1 February 2022. Retrieved 1 February 2022.
- ^ a b Eden 2007, p. 19.
- ^ Brooks, Richard (13 September 2015). "Traitor Burgess 'wanted to marry Churchill's niece'". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 1 February 2022. Retrieved 1 February 2022.
- ^ Bennett 1984.
- ^ Oxford 1933, "I dedicate this book to one of the loves of my life—Priscilla Bibesco".
- ^ "Priscilla Bibesco". The Independent. 27 November 2004. Archived from the original on 2 February 2022. Retrieved 2 February 2022.
- ^ Booth & Haste 2004, p. 4.
- ^ Wells, Gully (5 June 2011). "Dirty, dazzling Amis". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 2 February 2022. Retrieved 2 February 2022.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 32.
- ^ Barber, Michael (January 2015). "Freddie Ayer (in flagrante)". The Oldie. p. 37.
- ^ Carey, John (30 October 2011). "West End Front by Matthew Sweet". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 2 February 2022. Retrieved 2 February 2022.
- ^ Norwich 2013, Cooper in a letter to John Julius (5 September 1940).
- ^ Vickers 1994, p. 125 , quoted anonymously by Cecil Beaton in a letter to Greta Garbo (28 February 1948).
- ^ Booth & Haste 2004, p. 6.
- ^ Eden 2007, pp. 99–100.
- ^ Lewis, Jeremy (October 2015). "The man who dared publish Lolita". The Oldie. p. 28. Archived from the original on 3 February 2022. Retrieved 3 February 2022 – via PressReader.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 96.
- ^ Smith, Ed (14 December 2007). "Clarissa Eden: A Memoir edited by Cate Haste". The Times. Archived from the original on 3 February 2022. Retrieved 3 February 2022.
- ^ Moore 2013, p. 124.
- ^ Curtis 1998, p. 183, Wyatt, diary (14 August 1986).
- ^ Eden 2007, pp. 7–8.
- ^ a b Booth & Haste 2004, chpt. 1.
- ^ See, for example, Jeremy Lewis in The Oldie, March 2008: "highly entertaining" and "crammed with good things"; more generally, The Oldie Review of Books, Spring 2008.
- ^ Private Eye, 7 March 2008.
- ^ "The Blagger's Guide To...Books by Prime Ministers' spouses". The Independent. 6 March 2011. Archived from the original on 4 February 2022. Retrieved 4 February 2022.
- ^ Curtis 1998, p. 57, Wyatt, diary (15 January 1986).
- ^ Colville 1985, pp. 162, 424, diary entries for 17 June 1940 and 4 August 1941.
- ^ Cooper 1954.
- ^ Cooper 1954, p. 287 .
- ^ Curtis 1998, pp. 117–118, Wyatt, diary (7 April 1986).
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 85.
- ^ Low, Valentine (7 December 2013). "Edward VIII's other lover? No smoke without fire". The Times. Archived from the original on 4 February 2022. Retrieved 4 February 2022.
- ^ Norwich 2005, p. 197, editorial footnote.
- ^ Norwich 2005, Cooper, diary (24 November 1947).
- ^ Aitken 2013, p. 390.
- ^ a b c Charmley 1986.
- ^ Devonshire 2010, p. 69, Devonshire in a letter to Nancy Mitford (27 May 1959).
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 23.
- ^ Vickers 1994.
- ^ Wheeler, Sara (11 October 2014). "The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me by Sofka Zinovieff". The Times. Archived from the original on 5 February 2022. Retrieved 5 February 2022.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 42.
- ^ Eden 2007, pp. 106–107.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 40.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 46.
- ^ Thompson 2003, p. 185.
- ^ a b Thompson 2003.
- ^ Pearson 1966, p. 188.
- ^ Curtis 1998, p. 313, Wyatt, diary (16 March 1987); Booth & Haste 2004, p. 32.
- ^ Lahr 2001, p. 93, Tynan, diary (21 April 1972).
- ^ Campbell 2014.
- ^ Rhodes James 1986, p. 356.
- ^ Gilbert 1983, p. 433.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 52, which gives the date of the lunch as 31 May 1940.
- ^ Thompson 2008, who describes 31 May, when Churchill attended the Supreme War Council in Paris, as "the day on which there was so much top-level discussion and dissent among the French and British".
- ^ a b Butler 1971.
- Emerald Cunard.
- ^ a b Catterall 2003, Macmillan, diary (13–15 August 1952).
- ^ Ben Schott, The Times, 27 June 2007.
- ^ Thorpe 2003, p. 379; Booth & Haste 2004, p. 2.
- ^ Eden 2007, pp. 114–115.
- ^ Wilson 2006.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 7.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 114.
- ^ Colville 1985, p. 653, diary (11 August 1952).
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 123.
- ^ Thorpe 2003, p. 379.
- ^ Townsend 1978, p. 238.
- ^ The Queen. Episode 1. 29 November 2009. Channel 4.
- ^ Cannadine, David (22 October 1987). "The Next Best Man". The New York Review of Books. Vol. XXXIV. Archived from the original on 7 February 2022. Retrieved 7 February 2022.
- ^ PMID 14578742.
- ^ Turner 2006. The extract in Turner refers to "Harold Evans", but this must be a mistake for Horace Evans, the royal physician.
- ^ Turner 2006, Shuckburgh, quoted.
- ^ Thomas 1970, p. 46 .
- ^ Vickers 1994, Beaton, diary quoted.
- ^ Vickers 1994, p. 236 , Beaton, diary quoted.
- ^ Rhodes James 1986, pp. 414–415.
- ^ Clark 1998.
- ^ Colville 1985, p. 708.
- ^ McLachlan, Donald (3 January 1956). "Waiting for the smack of firm government ...". The Daily Telegraph. p. 6.
- ^ Campbell 1983, p. 838.
- ^ Davenport-Hines 2013, p. 279.
- ^ Norwich 2013.
- ^ Catterall 2003, Macmillan, diary (26 July 1956); Thorpe 2003, p. 460.
- ^ Thompson 2003, p. 334.
- ^ Baston 2004, footnote 5 to chapter 27.
- ^ Rhodes James 1986, p. 413.
- ^ Booth & Haste 2004, p. 20.
- ^ Horne 1989, p. 166.
- ^ Booth & Haste 2004, p. 54, Katharine Macmillan, quoted.
- ^ Rhodes James 1986, p. 412.
- ^ Amory 1985, Fleming, diary (13 January 1956).
- ^ Thorpe 2010, p. 412 , Macmillan's view, quoted.
- ^ Thorpe 2010, p. 412.
- ^ a b Crankshaw 1971, p. 444.
- ^ Thomas 1970.
- ^ Booth & Haste 2004, p. 27. Lady Avon's memoir of 2007 appears to confirm this version.
- ^ Booth & Haste 2004, p. 27; Sandbrook 2005.
- ^ Augarde 1991, p. 71:19, speech at Gateshead (20 November 1956).
- ^ Booth & Haste 2004, p. 25.
- ^ "The absence of David Miliband is the gash in Labour's heart". Evening Standard. 29 September 2010. Archived from the original on 8 February 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2022.
- ^ The Times, leading article, 17 December 2011.
- ^ a b c Farndale, Nigel (21 October 2007). "Clarissa Eden: A witness to history". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 4 March 2018. Retrieved 8 February 2022. Farndale wondered whether Lady Avon's appearance was "a trick of the light", noting that it was an overcast morning and there was no electric lighting.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: postscript (link) - ^ a b Eden 1960, p. 550.
- ^ Jebb 1995, p. 191.
- ^ Thorpe 2010, p. 472, note 35.
- ^ Turner 2006; Thorpe 2010. Thorpe referred to Jebb's further sidelining at the disastrous Paris summit of 1960, during which Macmillan, having rejected official advice, visited Khrushchev at the Soviet embassy with only two of his private secretaries in attendance.
- ^ Benn 1994, p. 220, diary (15 December 1956).
- ^ Benn 1994, p. 221, diary (15 December 1956); Kynaston 2009.
- ^ Roberts 1994, p. 276.
- ^ Davenport-Hines 2006.
- ^ Nutting 1967; Butler 1971; Thompson 1971, Lord Boyle, quoted; Deedes 2004, p. 86 .
- ^ Turner 2006, p. 158 .
- ^ Horne 1988, p. 375, Sir Philip de Zulueta, quoted.
- ^ Thorpe 2003, p. 500.
- ^ Pimlott 1996, p. 253 .
- ^ Dutton 1997.
- ^ Seldon & Lodge 2010, p. 190.
- ^ Moore 2013; Aitken 2013.
- ^ Hurd 2010, pp. 351–352.
- ^ Hardy & Holmes 2009, p. 547 ; Kynaston 2009.
- ^ Carey, John (7 June 2009). "Enlightening: Letters 1946 1960 by Isaiah Berlin, ed Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 10 February 2022. Retrieved 10 February 2022.
- ^ Jeremy Lewis in The Oldie, February 2016, at page 37.
- ^ Booth & Haste 2004, p. 26.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 253, diary (4 November 1956); Thorpe 2003, p. 528; Hennessy 2006, p. 446.
- ^ Rankin 2011, p. 146.
- ^ Heath 1998, pp. 175–176.
- ^ Rankin 2011, p. 147.
- Antiques Trade Gazette, 29 September 2012.
- ^ Parker 2014, p. 21.
- ^ Amory 1985.
- ^ Booth & Haste 2004, p. 29.
- ^ Roberts 2008, p. 298.
- ^ Crankshaw 1971, p. 443.
- ^ Mark Edmonds, quoting Una Trueblood, in Sunday Times, 4 October 2012.
- ^ Davenport-Hines 2013, p. 60.
- ^ Rankin 2011, pp. 146, 358.
- ^ a b Ure, John (10 September 2014). "[Untitled review]". Country Life. 208 (37): 140.
- ^ Richards 1968.
- ^ Pearson 1966.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 259.
- ^ Seymour, Miranda (7 October 2012). "Hot loves of the real Pussy Galore". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 10 February 2022. Retrieved 10 February 2022.
- ^ Parker 2014.
- ^ "Blanche Blackwell". The Times. 12 August 2017. Archived from the original on 16 August 2017. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
- ^ Dodds, Klaus (October 2012). "James Bond at 50: Shaken and Stirred". History Today. 62 (10): 51. Archived from the original on 24 November 2020. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
- ^ MacIntyre, Ben (29 September 2012). "James Bond's greatest foe: the book critics". The Times. Archived from the original on 13 February 2022. Retrieved 13 February 2022.
- ^ von Tunzelmann 2011, pp. 184–185.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 73.
- ^ Cannadine 2002, p. 280.
- ^ Susanna Johnson, The Oldie, October 2016, p. 18. Twenty-year-old Johnson, then Susanna Chancellor, had won a competition in the Daily Mirror newspaper about "how to solve the Suez crisis", the prize for which was a holiday in Jamaica to coincide with the Edens' sojourn.
- ^ Thorpe 2010, p. 356, Eden, diary (14 December 1956).
- ^ Pimlott 1996.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 182, diary (26 January 1955).
- ^ Thorpe 1996, p. 187 .
- ^ a b c Horne 1989, p. 622.
- ^ Thorpe 2010, citing Martin Gilbert's research for his biographical study of Churchill.
- ^ Thorpe 2010, p. 409.
- ^ Thorpe 2010, p. 237. Thorpe produced biographies of both Eden and Macmillan.
- ^ Davenport-Hines 2013, p. 4.
- ^ Eden 2007, editorial note.
- ^ Aitken 2013, p. 344.
- ^ Rhodes James 1986, p. 602.
- ^ Sandbrook 2005.
- ^ Atticus, Sunday Times, 21 January 2007.
- ^ Hayes 2014.
- ^ Eden 2007, p. 265.
- ^ Rhodes James 1986, p. 620, Eden, diary (11 September 1976).
- ^ Hastings 2009.
- ^ Rhodes James 1986, p. 620; Thorpe 2003, p. 590.
- ^ "Sir Martin Gilbert, historian – obituary". The Daily Telegraph. 4 February 2015. Archived from the original on 18 September 2017. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
- ^ Moore 2013, p. 707.
- ^ Ziegler 1990, p. 479, Beaton, diary (5 June 1972).
- ^ Ziegler 1990, p. 479.
- ^ Campbell 2007, p. 619, diary entry (29 April 2002).
- ^ James Hughes-Onslow in The Oldie, September 2013.
- ^ Married to the Prime Minister. Channel 4. 6 December 2005 – based on Booth & Haste (2004).
{{cite AV media}}
: CS1 maint: postscript (link) - ^ Suez: A Very British Crisis. BBC Television. 31 October 2006.
- ^ Gill, A. A. (11 December 2005). "Coming up for airtime". The Times. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
- ^ Sunday Times Culture, 16 March 2008.
- from the original on 16 November 2021. Retrieved 12 February 2022.
- ^ [Telegraph Obituaries] (15 November 2021). "The Countess of Avon, intellectual and independent-minded widow of the prime minister Anthony Eden and niece of Winston Churchill – obituary". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 15 November 2021.
- ^ Haste, Cate (n.d.). "Clarissa Eden obituary". The Guardian (published 16 November 2021). Archived from the original on 16 November 2021. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
- ^ "Remembering: The Countess of Avon". Diocese of Salisbury. 17 November 2021. Archived from the original on 20 February 2022. Retrieved 20 February 2022.
- ^ Vickers, Hugo (28 November 2021). "Clarissa Eden RIP". International Churchill Society. Archived from the original on 20 February 2022. Retrieved 20 February 2022.
- ^ Morgan, Abi (19 July 2011). The Hour. Series 1. Episode 1. BBC Two. In the same scene, Rowley enquired about the health of "Prime Minister Eden", an improbable mode of expression in Britain.
{{cite episode}}
: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
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