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Portrait of Anthony Eden

Prime Ministers · 20th century

Anthony Eden

1897–1977 · British

Conservative

In office: 1955–1957

Sir Anthony Eden was three times Foreign Secretary and Churchill's long-awaited heir, succeeding him as Conservative prime minister in April 1955 and increasing the party's majority at an election that May. His premiership was wrecked by the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Britain secretly colluded with France and Israel to retake the canal nationalised by Nasser. Humiliated and in poor health, he resigned in January 1957.

How to spot them

  • ▸The Suez Crisis (1956); Colonel Nasser
  • ▸Churchill's heir; married Churchill's niece Clarissa
  • ▸Resigned as Foreign Secretary in 1938 in protest at appeasement
  • ▸Dapper 'glamour boy'; the Homburg hat known as an 'Anthony Eden'
  • ▸Became Earl of Avon (1961)

In office

The Suez Crisis and Operation Musketeer (1956)

Anglo-French invasion of Egypt after Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal; halted under US pressure

The secret Protocol of Sèvres (1956)

Collusion with France and Israel to create a pretext for intervention

Clean Air Act passed after the Great Smog of London (1956)

Created smoke control areas

Visit of Khrushchev and Bulganin and the Buster Crabb affair (1956)

A navy frogman vanished while spying on the Soviet cruiser that brought them

Deportation of Archbishop Makarios from Cyprus (1956)

Exiled to the Seychelles during the EOKA emergency

'The Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing room' (1956)

Remark by his wife Clarissa during the crisis

Key ideas

  • Popularised the idea of a 'property-owning democracy' for post-war Conservatism
  • Suez came to symbolise the end of Britain's status as an independent great power

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born at Windlestone Hall, Rushyford, County Durham
  • •Won the Military Cross in the First World War
  • •Took a first in Oriental Languages (Persian and Arabic) at Christ Church, Oxford
  • •Foreign Secretary 1935–38, 1940–45 and 1951–55
  • •Botched gallbladder operations in 1953 damaged his health for the rest of his life
  • •Resigned on 9 January 1957 and was succeeded by Harold Macmillan
  • •Created Earl of Avon in 1961

Drill it — 6 cards

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Sources