View source for Clarissa Eden

{{Short description|English memoirist (1920–2021)}}
{{Use British English|date=May 2015}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2025}}
{{Infobox person
| honorific-prefix = [[The Right Honourable]]
| name             = The Countess of Avon
| image            = Clarissa Eden.jpg
| caption          = Clarissa, Lady Eden, in 1960
| known_for        = [[Spouse of the prime minister of the United Kingdom]] (1955–1957)
| birth_name       = Anne Clarissa Spencer-Churchill
| birth_date       = {{Birth date|df=yes|1920|6|28}}
| birth_place      = [[Kensington]], London, England
| death_date       = {{death date and age|df=yes|2021|11|15|1920|6|28}}
| death_place      = London, England
| spouse           = {{marriage|[[Anthony Eden]]|14 August 1952|14 January 1977|reason=d}}
| father           = {{plainlist|
* [[Harold Baker (politician)|Harold Baker]] (biological)
* [[Jack Churchill (1880–1947)|Jack Churchill]] (legal)
}}
| family           = {{flatlist|
* [[Spencer-Churchill family|Spencer-Churchill]]
* [[Eden family|Eden]]}}
}}

'''Anne Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon''' ({{nee|'''Spencer-Churchill'''}}; 28 June 1920 – 15 November 2021) was an English memoirist and the second wife of [[Anthony Eden]], who served as [[British prime minister]] from 1955 to 1957. She married Eden in 1952, becoming '''Lady Eden''' in 1954 when he was made [[Knight Companion of the Garter]],<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=40310 |date=26 October 1954 |page=6067}}</ref> before becoming Countess of Avon in 1961 when her husband was created [[Earl of Avon]]. In 2007, at 87, she released her memoir subtitled ''[[#2007 memoir|From Churchill to Eden]]''.

On the death of [[Lady Wilson of Rievaulx]] in 2018, Lady Avon became the oldest living [[Spouse of the prime minister of the United Kingdom|spouse of a British prime minister]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kettle |first=Martin |author-link=Martin Kettle |date=8 June 2018 |title='Acerbic and firm': Mary Wilson remembered fondly after death at 102 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jun/08/acerbic-and-firm-mary-wilson-remembered-fondly-after-death-at-102 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211115232829/https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jun/08/acerbic-and-firm-mary-wilson-remembered-fondly-after-death-at-102 |archive-date=15 November 2021 |access-date=15 November 2021 |website=The Guardian |quote=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.}}</ref> She turned 100 in 2020,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Vickers |first=Hugo |author-link=Hugo Vickers |date=30 June 2020 |title=The Countess of Avon at 100 |url=https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/churchill-bulletin/bulletin-145-jul-2020/the-countess-of-avon-at-100/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211115233308/https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/churchill-bulletin/bulletin-145-jul-2020/the-countess-of-avon-at-100/ |archive-date=15 November 2021 |access-date=15 November 2021 |publisher=[[International Churchill Society]]}}</ref> the second British prime minister's spouse to become a [[List of centenarians (royalty and nobility)|centenarian]] after Wilson.
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==Early life==
Clarissa Spencer-Churchill was born on 28 June 1920, legally the daughter of [[Major Jack Spencer-Churchill]] (1880–1947) and {{ill|Lady Gwendoline Churchill|lt=Lady Gwendoline ("Goonie") Bertie|qid=Q75386119}} (1885–1941), a daughter of the [[Montagu Bertie, 7th Earl of Abingdon|7th Earl of Abingdon]], who had married in 1908. Her elder brothers were [[John Spencer-Churchill (artist)|John ("Johnnie")]] (1909–1992), an artist, and Henry Winston (1913–2002), known as Peregrine.{{sfn|<!--See -->loc= genealogical table of the Churchills|<!-- in -->Cannadine|1994|p=252}} However, it was later discovered that her biological father was the Liberal politician [[Harold Baker (politician)|Harold Baker]], who had had an affair with Lady Gwendoline in 1919.<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Vickers |first=Hugo |author-link=Hugo Vickers |date=December 2024 |title=The Avon lady on Suez |url=https://issuu.com/theoldie3/docs/oldie_446_mobile/22 |magazine=[[The Oldie]] |pages=22–23 |via=[[Issuu]] |issue=446}}</ref>

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&nbsp;... orientated to horses",{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=11}} which she disliked and left early without any formal qualifications.{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} 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".{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004|p=3}}

===Paris, Tuscany and London (1937–1939)===
In 1937 Spencer-Churchill studied art in Paris.{{sfn|<!--See -->Thorpe|2003|p=376}} Her mother had asked the British ambassador, [[George Clerk (diplomat)|Sir George Clerk]], to keep a watchful eye on her, an [[unintended consequence]] of this being that she was taken under the wing of an embassy press secretary who, with his wife, introduced her to a round of [[Café society|''café'' society]] parties.{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004|p=3}} Among the friends she made in Paris were writers [[Sir Fitzroy Maclean, 1st Baronet|Fitzroy Maclean]] and [[Marthe Bibesco]]. Together with two female contemporaries, she visited the [[Folies Bergère]], an unusual destination for 16-year-old girls, where the singer [[Josephine Baker]], clad only in a circlet of bananas, became the first naked female body she had ever seen.{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=16}}

In the summer of 1937, Spencer-Churchill accompanied [[Julian Asquith]] (grandson of the [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal]] prime minister [[H. H. Asquith]]) and his mother, [[Katharine Asquith|Katharine]], on tour, mainly by third class rail, across the [[Apennines]] in the [[Tuscany]] region of Italy.{{sfn|Eden|2007}}{{page needed|date=November 2021}} Among other artistic treasures, she saw the fifteenth-century [[frescoe]]s by [[Piero della Francesca]] at [[Arezzo]], one of which, ''The Queen of Sheba Adoring the Holy Wood'' ({{c.|1452}}), she nominated in 2010 as her favourite painting{{mdash}}"in an age of violence he went on painting clearly and calmly".<ref name="Country Life, 8 September 2010">''[[Country Life (magazine)|Country Life]]'', 8 September 2010.</ref>{{Verify source|date=February 2022|type=URL required,}}

When Spencer-Churchill returned to London, she enrolled at the [[Slade School of Fine Art]]. Around this time, she displayed her [[individualism]] by acquiring a specially tailored [[trouser suit]] along the lines of those associated with the actress [[Marlene Dietrich]]{{sfn|Eden|2007}}{{page needed|date=November 2021}} after the latter's appearance in the film ''[[Morocco (film)|Morocco]]'' (1930). 1938 was the future Lady Avon's "[[Debutante|coming out]]" year, and she was regarded as "[o]ne of the more notable" [[débutante]]s{{sfn|Broad|1955|p={{pli|https://archive.org/details/siranthonyedenth012634mbp/page/n224|205}}{{spaces|2|thin}}{{free access}}}} in "a vintage year for beautiful girls",{{sfn|Devonshire|2010|p=85}} but, having mixed with older and more sophisticated people in Paris, she seemed to have disdained the circuit—since described by [[Anne de Courcy]] as "more or less naive seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds suddenly flung into a round of gaities"{{sfn|de Courcy|1989}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}—and was never presented at [[Royal court|court]]. Another débutante of 1938, [[Deborah Mitford]], later Duchess of Devonshire, recalled Spencer-Churchill as exhibiting "more than a whiff of [[Greta Garbo|[Greta] Garbo]] in a dress by [[Maggy Rouff]] of Paris".{{sfn|Devonshire|2010|p=85}}{{efn|Another who did the season in 1938 was Sarah (Sally) Norton, daughter of the 6th [[Lord Grantley]]. She had learnt fluent German in [[Munich]], but "despite her eighteen-inch waist and perfect legs", she was still single when war broke out in 1939.{{sfn|Trumpington|2014}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}  On [[VE Day]] in 1945, Norton met the future [[William Astor, 3rd Viscount Astor|3rd Viscount Astor]] and was engaged to him within a week.<ref>{{Cite news |date=15 February 2013 |title=Sarah Baring |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9873999/Sarah-Baring.html |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220201223050/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9873999/Sarah-Baring.html |archive-date=1 February 2022 |access-date=1 February 2022 |work=The Daily Telegraph}}<!--(''Daily Telegraph'' obituary of Sarah Baring, 13 February 2013)--></ref>}}

Among those with whom Spencer-Churchill danced at that year's Liberal [[Ball (dance party)|ball]] was the future [[double agent]] [[Donald Maclean (spy)|Donald Maclean]], who complained that she was too smart to be "a proper Liberal girl like the [[Bonham Carter family|Bonham-Carters]] and the [[Asquith family|Asquiths]]".{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=19}}{{efn| Lady Avon later reflected that it turned out Maclean "wasn't a proper Liberal boy either".{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=19}}}} She also knew [[Guy Burgess]], who fled to Russia in 1951 when he and Maclean were about to be unmasked as traitors. A 2015 biography of Burgess, a homosexual, contained claims that, encouraged by his Soviet "[[agent handling|handlers]]", he had contemplated marriage to Spencer-Churchill. However, the latter, then aged 95, denied that they had been close. She described Burgess as "courteous, amusing, nice and good company" but said that he had been "standoffish" towards her and did not wish any friendship to develop.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brooks |first=Richard |date=13 September 2015 |title=Traitor Burgess 'wanted to marry Churchill's niece' |url=https://www.thetimes.com/comment/register/article/traitor-burgess-wanted-to-marry-churchills-niece-s0k2slk83m7 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220201232815/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/traitor-burgess-wanted-to-marry-churchills-niece-s0k2slk83m7 |archive-date=1 February 2022 |access-date=1 February 2022 |website=[[The Sunday Times]]}}<!--(reporting publication of [[Andrew Lownie]], ''The Lives of Guy Burgess'')--></ref>

In 1939 Spencer-Churchill spent another four months in Paris and, in August of that year, travelled to [[Kingdom of Romania|Romania]] as a guest of the novelist [[Elizabeth Bibesco]] and her husband [[Antoine Bibesco|Antoine]] (Elizabeth's mother, [[Margot Asquith]], having been left distraught after her daughter visited her in London earlier in the year{{sfn|Bennett|1984}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}{{efn| Due to the war, mother and daughter never met again and died within four months of each other in 1945. Elizabeth's daughter, {{ill|Priscilla Bibesco|lt=Priscilla|s=1|v=ib|qid=Q75440443}} (1920–2004), to whom Asquith dedicated her second volume of memoirs in 1933—"one of the loves of my life"{{sfn|Oxford|1933|loc="I dedicate this book to one of the loves of my life—Priscilla Bibesco"}}—escaped Romania by [[hitchhiking]] to [[Greater Lebanon|Lebanon]]. She, too, never saw her mother nor her grandmother again.<ref>{{Cite news |date=27 November 2004 |title=Priscilla Bibesco |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/priscilla-bibesco-534719.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220202205851/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/priscilla-bibesco-534719.html |archive-date=2 February 2022 |access-date=2 February 2022 |work=[[The Independent]] |language=en}}</ref>}}). 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.{{sfn|Eden|2007}}{{page needed|date=November 2021}}

=== Second World War: Oxford and the Foreign Office ===
[[File:Foreign & Commonwealth Office main building.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|The [[Foreign Office]] in London, {{circa|2014}}]]

In 1940, encouraged by economist [[Roy Harrod]], Spencer-Churchill went to Oxford to study philosophy, although not as an undergraduate because of her lack of qualifications. While there, she became associated with, among other leading academics, [[Isaiah Berlin]] and [[Maurice Bowra]].{{sfn|<!--See -->Thorpe|2003|p=376}} Lady [[Antonia Fraser]], whose father, later [[Lord Longford]], was a fellow of [[Christ Church, Oxford|Christ Church]], described her as having been "the dons' delight".{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004|p=4}} For a short while she was tutored by [[A. J. Ayer]], a future [[Wykeham Professor]] of Logic known for his [[libidinous]] lifestyle,<ref><!--See, for example, Gully Wells (Ayer's stepdaughter) in -->{{Cite news |last=Wells |first=Gully |date=5 June 2011 |title=Dirty, dazzling Amis |url=https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/europe-travel/france/paris/dirty-dazzling-amis-dl60m5d6vfp |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220202211546/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dirty-dazzling-amis-dl60m5d6vfp |archive-date=2 February 2022 |access-date=2 February 2022 |work=The Sunday Times}}</ref> although his womanising was not extended to her.{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=32}}{{efn|Just after the war an [[Oxford don]] remarked to [[Paul Johnson (writer)|Paul Johnson]], then an undergraduate: "That's Ayer. Might have been a great philosopher. Ruined by sex."<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Barber |first=Michael |date=January 2015 |title=Freddie Ayer (in flagrante) |magazine=[[The Oldie]] |page=37}}</ref>}}

When Spencer-Churchill moved back to London, she decoded [[cipher]]s in the communications department of the [[Foreign Office]], where her future husband was the secretary of state from 1940 to 1945.  One of her colleagues was [[Anthony Nutting]], who in 1956 resigned from [[Anthony Eden's government]] because of his opposition to the [[Suez Operation]]. For a time, the future Lady Avon lived in a rooftop room at the [[Dorchester Hotel]], which she obtained at a cut-price rate because of its vulnerability to bombing{{sfn|Eden|2007}}{{page needed|date=November 2021}} (although the building was a modern, steel-framed structure with extensive underground accommodation that was considered relatively safe during air raids).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Carey |first=John |author-link=John Carey (critic) |date=30 October 2011 |title=West End Front by Matthew Sweet |url=https://www.thetimes.com/comment/register/article/west-end-front-by-matthew-sweet-qpd089n5923 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220202213554/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/west-end-front-by-matthew-sweet-qpd089n5923 |archive-date=2 February 2022 |access-date=2 February 2022 |website=The Sunday Times}}<!--(reviewing Matthew Sweet (2011) ''West End Front'')--></ref>{{efn| [[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".{{sfn|Norwich|2013|loc=Cooper in a letter to [[John Julius Norwich|John Julius]] (5 September 1940)}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}}}

=== Post-war ===
After the war Spencer-Churchill worked at [[London Films]] for the producer [[Sir Alexander Korda]], who she thought made "terrible mistakes without really knowing what has happened",{{sfn|Vickers|1994|p={{pli|{{GBurl|id=Q3-RAAAAIAAJ|q="terrible mistakes without really knowing what has happened"}}|125}}{{spaces|2|thin}}{{limited access}}|loc=quoted anonymously by [[Cecil Beaton]] in a letter to [[Greta Garbo]] (28 February 1948)}} and as a reviewer for the fashion magazine ''[[Vogue (magazine)|Vogue]]''. She met the actor [[Orson Welles]], who became a dining companion, on the set of the film ''[[The Third Man]]'' (1949), and escorted actress [[Paulette Goddard]], who played Mrs. Cheverley in Korda's production of [[Oscar Wilde]]'s ''[[An Ideal Husband (1947 film)|An Ideal Husband]]'' (1947), on "a rather wild trip" to [[Brussels]].{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004|p=6}}  During the latter excursion, Goddard expressed a wish to attend a [[pornographic show]]. Still, although Korda's representatives made arrangements for this, she shied away when she and Spencer-Churchill, having climbed "a flight of shabby stairs", were greeted by two men in black suits.{{sfn|Eden|2007|pp=99-100}}

Spencer-Churchill also worked for the short-lived [[monthly magazine]] ''Contact'', established by [[George Weidenfeld, Baron Weidenfeld|George (later Lord) Weidenfeld]] and edited by [[Philip Toynbee]]. Weidenfeld was keen to expand into [[book publishing]], and ''Contact'', which appeared with a [[hard cover]], offered a means of circumventing post-war paper quotas.{{sfn|Eden|2007}}{{page needed|date=November 2021}}<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Lewis |first=Jeremy |date=October 2015 |title=The man who dared publish Lolita |url=https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-oldie/20150916/281633894015574 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220203214143/https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-oldie/20150916/281633894015574 |archive-date=3 February 2022 |access-date=3 February 2022 |magazine=The Oldie |page=28 |via=[[PressReader]]}}</ref>  Among those Spencer-Churchill persuaded to contribute to the magazine was the cookery writer [[Elizabeth David]], whose recipes became very influential in the 1950s. Through Weidenfeld she also became a close friend of [[Marcus Sieff]], later chairman of the retailer [[Marks and Spencer]].{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=96}}

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 House|Hatfield]] and [[Fitzrovia]]",{{sfn|Thorpe|2003|p=376}} while a reviewer of her memoir wrote that "few lives can have touched so many social worlds, or graced them so elegantly".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Smith |first=Ed |date=14 December 2007 |title=Clarissa Eden: A Memoir edited by Cate Haste |url=https://www.thetimes.com/comment/register/article/clarissa-eden-a-memoir-edited-by-cate-haste-zbg6730v5ql |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220203215902/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/clarissa-eden-a-memoir-edited-by-cate-haste-zbg6730v5ql |archive-date=3 February 2022 |access-date=3 February 2022 |website=The Times}}</ref>  Even so, the future Lady Avon did not impress everyone: after the future prime minister [[Margaret Thatcher]] met her at a [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative Party]] ball in 1954, she wrote dismissively to her sister, "Mrs Anthony Eden received us. Really she is a most colourless personality".{{sfn|Moore|2013|p=124}}{{efn| In fact, it might have been said of both women{{original research inline|date=February 2021}} that, as {{harvtxt|Moore|2013|p=128}} wrote of Thatcher's period at the [[Bar (law)|bar]] in the 1950s: "Without the slightest hint of impropriety, she&nbsp;... sought and enjoyed the company of clever, older men."  Thatcher was [[Leader of the Conservative Party (UK)|Leader of the Conservative Party]] when Anthony Eden died in 1977, and Lady Avon had corresponded with her about her husband's declining health.{{sfn|Eden|2007}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}}}

== 2007 memoir ==
{{Infobox book
| italic title  = no
| name          = A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden
| image         = A Memoir- From Churchill to Eden.jpg
| border        = yes
| caption       = First edition
| editor        = [[Cate Haste]]
| country       = {{wikidata|property|edit|page=A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden|P495}}
| language      = {{wikidata|property|edit|page=A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden|language}}
| subject       = 
| genre         = <!-- [[Memoir]] -->
| publisher     = [[Weidenfeld & Nicolson]]
| pub_date      = {{wikidata|property|edit|page=A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden|publicationDate}}
| media_type    = Print (hardback)
| pages         = 288
| isbn          = 978-0-297-85193-6
}}
Glimpses of Spencer-Churchill's life as a [[single woman]], for example, in diaries and other reminiscences, are quite extensive.{{according to whom|date=February 2022}} Although she had indicated to the former [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] member of Parliament (MP) [[Woodrow Wyatt]] that no memoir of her own would appear until after her death,{{sfn|Curtis|1998|p=183|loc=Wyatt, diary (14 August 1986)}} a volume, edited by [[Cate Haste]], was nevertheless published by [[Weidenfeld & Nicolson]] in 2007,{{sfn|Eden|2007|pp=7-8}} and Phoenix brought out a paperback edition in 2008. In 2004 Haste had collaborated with [[Cherie Booth]], wife of the then prime minister [[Tony Blair]], to produce a biographical chapter about Lady Avon as part of a broader study of prime ministerial spouses.{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004||loc=chpt. 1}}  Avon noted that after meeting Haste, she realised that the latter's "enthusiasm and professionalism could make it possible".{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=11}}

A photograph on the [[dust jacket]] of her memoir, depicting a young, pensive Spencer-Churchill, cigarette in hand, conveyed an alluring and slightly [[Bohemian style|Bohemian]] image. The book was generally well-received by critics<ref>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.</ref>{{Verify source|date=February 2022}} and even generated an engaging "spoof" in the satirical magazine ''[[Private Eye]]'' ("In the early 1950s I married Anthony Eden, a politician of above average height, with a prominent moustache&nbsp;..."<ref>''Private Eye'', 7 March 2008.</ref>{{Verify source|date=February 2022}}). Historian [[Andrew Roberts (historian)|Andrew Roberts]] described it as "the last great British autobiography of the pre-war and wartime era",<ref>{{Cite news |date=6 March 2011 |title=The Blagger's Guide To...Books by Prime Ministers' spouses |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-blagger-s-guide-to-books-by-prime-ministers-spouses-2233424.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220204222115/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-blagger-s-guide-to-books-by-prime-ministers-spouses-2233424.html |archive-date=4 February 2022 |access-date=4 February 2022 |work=The Independent |language=en}}<!-- Review in the London ''Evening Standard'', quoted in ''The Oldie Review of Books'', Spring 2008. --></ref> while art critic [[John McEwen (art critic)|John McEwen]] remarked on its "witty and elegant restraint".<ref name="Country Life, 8 September 2010" />{{Verify source|date=February 2022}}

== 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&nbsp;... still alive [in 1986]".{{sfn|Curtis|1998|p=57|loc=Wyatt, diary (15 January 1986)}} She had many devoted admirers, an early "ardent [[suitor]]" being [[Sir Colville Barclay, 14th Baronet|Sir Colville Barclay]], briefly a diplomat and later a painter, who was the stepson of [[Lord Vansittart]], former permanent head of the Foreign Office.{{sfn|Colville|1985|pp=162, 424|loc= diary entries for 17 June 1940 and 4 August 1941}}

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:{{sfn|<!--See -->Cooper|1954}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}{{efn| Cooper and his wife [[Lady Diana Cooper|Lady Diana]] had, like Spencer-Churchill, taken a room at the Dorchester Hotel in the early years of the Second World War.{{sfn|Cooper|1954|p={{pli|https://archive.org/details/oldmenforget011687mbp/page/n304|287}}{{spaces|2|thin}}{{free access}}}}}} "I was the only woman who he never got more than a peck on the cheek from".{{sfn|Curtis|1998|pp=117-118|loc=Wyatt, diary (7 April 1986)}}{{efn| This appears to derive from Cooper's observation to Lady Avon that she was the only woman he had loved from whom he had sought no more.{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=85}} According to historian [[Hugo Vickers]], [[Pinna Cruger]] (1896–1950), wife of a millionaire [[haberdasher]], Bertram Cruger, and possibly [[Mistress (lover)|mistress]], for a time, of the Prince of Wales, later [[Edward VIII]], "backed off Duff Cooper when she detected that he was happily married".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Low |first=Valentine |date=7 December 2013 |title=Edward VIII's other lover? No smoke without fire |url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-family/article/edward-viiis-other-lover-no-smoke-without-fire-swtjtp50vnf |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220204235820/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/edward-viiis-other-lover-no-smoke-without-fire-swtjtp50vnf |archive-date=4 February 2022 |access-date=4 February 2022 |work=The Times}}</ref> Bertram Cruger was an admirer of Cooper's wife [[Lady Diana Cooper|Diana]], the two having met in New York City.{{sfn|Norwich|2005|loc= editorial footnote|page= 197}}}}  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".{{sfn|Norwich|2005|loc=Cooper, diary (24 November 1947)}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}{{efn| {{harvtxt|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|date=February 2022}} 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".{{sfn|Aitken|2013|p=390}}}}  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&nbsp;... Have you any suggestions? (not funny ones)"{{sfn|Charmley|1986}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}—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.{{sfn|Charmley|1986}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}

=== Other friends ===
Among the future Lady Avon's many other friends, several of whom were some years older than she, were the novelists [[Evelyn Waugh]], [[Anthony Powell]], and [[Nancy Mitford]] (whose sister [[Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire|Deborah]] wrote of an encounter with Avon some 20 years after they had been débutantes together that she found her "rather alarming"{{sfn|Devonshire|2010|p=69|loc= Devonshire in a letter to Nancy Mitford (27 May 1959)}}), painter [[Lucian Freud]], and choreographer [[Frederick Ashton]]. When she was still in her teens [[James Pope-Hennessy]] modelled on her the character of Perdita in ''London Fabric'' (1939) and dedicated the book "To Clarissa".{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=23}} [[Lord Berners|Gerald, Lord Berners]], used her as the basis of a character in his novel ''Far From the Madding War'' (1941), while photographer [[Cecil Beaton]], 16 years her senior, treated her as a special [[confidante]] and introduced her to the reclusive Swedish actress Greta Garbo.{{sfn|<!--See -->Vickers|1994}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} The journalist and author [[Sofka Zinovieff]] claimed that, after her grandmother, [[Jennifer Ross|Jennifer Fry]] (of the [[Fry's chocolate]] family), separated in 1944 from her grandfather, [[Robert Heber-Percy]], who was Lord Berners's closest friend, Spencer-Churchill and Beaton amused themselves by riffling through underclothes and [[love letter]]s that Fry had left in a drawer at Berners's country home, [[Faringdon House]], in Oxfordshire.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Wheeler |first=Sara |date=11 October 2014 |title=The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me by Sofka Zinovieff |url=https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/the-mad-boy-lord-berners-my-grandmother-and-me-by-sofka-zinovieff-j9f0qkvldfc |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220205214520/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-mad-boy-lord-berners-my-grandmother-and-me-by-sofka-zinovieff-j9f0qkvldfc |archive-date=5 February 2022 |access-date=5 February 2022 |website=The Times}}<!-- Sara Wheeler reviewing Sofka Zinovieff (2014) ''The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me'' in the ''Times Saturday Review'', 11 October 2014, page 15. --></ref>{{efn| 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",{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=42}} although they were lovers.}} A few years later while working at ''Contact'', Spencer-Churchill became friends with the writer and journalist [[Alan Ross]], who subsequently married Fry.{{sfn|Eden|2007|pp=106-107}}

Lady Avon thought the writer and horticulturalist [[Vita Sackville-West]] (whose husband, the politician and diplomat [[Harold Nicolson]] was a friend of her mother) "an interesting romantic figure". Still, she felt "dunched" by her "remote and rather superior" manner. Visiting her at [[Sissinghurst Castle Garden|Sissinghurst]] some years later, she "thought the less of her" for troubling to provide, evidently in a hurry, table napkins that were still damp.{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=40}}  Like Avon herself, many of her acquaintances frequented the bookshop Heywood Hill, next to the hairdresser [[Trumper's]] in [[Mayfair]]'s [[Curzon Street]], which, during the war was managed by Nancy Mitford and became a regular meeting place:{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=46}} according to Mitford's sister, [[Diana Mitford|Diana, Lady Mosley]], "[i]ts ground-floor room didn't just {{em|look}} like a private club, it very nearly was one".{{sfn|Thompson|2003|p=185}}{{efn| 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.{{sfn|Thompson|2003}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}}}

Avon was a long-standing friend of [[Ann Fleming]], wife of novelist [[Ian Fleming]] and lover of [[Hugh Gaitskell]], [[Leader of the Labour Party (UK)|Leader of the Labour Party]] from 1955 to 1963, who had previously been married to [[Esmond Harmsworth, 2nd Viscount Rothermere|Viscount Rothermere]]. In 1952, she and composer and playwright [[Noël Coward]] became godparents to the Flemings' son Caspar,{{sfn|Pearson|1966|p=188}} who died of a drug overdose in 1975. In later years, as a widow, she was close to the influential solicitor [[Lord Goodman]].{{sfnm|Curtis|1998|1loc=Wyatt, diary (16 March 1987)|1p=313|2a1=Booth|2a2=Haste|2y=2004|2p=32}}{{efn| Goodman was a major figure in the British artistic establishment. [[Kenneth Tynan]] described him in 1972 as "[t]he [[antibody]] in our time&nbsp;... [N]ever [holding] elective office, he has wielded more power than anyone in the country, except the Prime Minister during the past decade".{{sfn|Lahr|2001|p=93|loc=Tynan, diary (21 April 1972)}}}}  Another long-standing social acquaintance was Labour minister [[Roy Jenkins|Roy (later Lord) Jenkins]], also a friend of Ann Fleming. Jenkins's official biographer chose, as an example of the broadly-based groups Jenkins would entertain at his home at [[East Hendred]], a small party assembled there in March 1994—Avon, together with the architectural historian [[James Lees-Milne]], Jenkins's publisher [[Roland Philipps]] and their wives.{{sfn|Campbell|2014}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}

== Relationship with Anthony Eden ==
[[File:Anthony Eden (retouched).jpg|upright|thumb|[[Anthony Eden]], {{c.|1941–42}}]]

Spencer-Churchill first met her future husband at [[Cranborne]], Dorset (home of the future [[5th Marquess of Salisbury]]), in 1936, when she was 16. He was already famous for his elegant attire and [[Anthony Eden hat|Homburg hat]], and she was struck by Eden's unusual pinstriped [[tweed]] trousers.{{sfn|Rhodes James|1986|p=356}}

=== 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 [[Winston Churchill|Winston]], who became prime minister in May 1940. As an illustration of her occasional proximity to the centre of power, between meetings of the [[War Cabinet]] on 30 May 1940, when the [[Dunkirk evacuation]] was at its height, Spencer-Churchill was present when Churchill lunched with her parents and the [[John Spencer-Churchill, 10th Duke of Marlborough|Duke]] and Duchess of Marlborough.{{sfn|Gilbert|1983|p=433}} The future Lady Avon described this occasion as "a nightmare, with news of people's deaths coming in&nbsp;...".{{sfn|Eden|2007|loc= which gives the date of the lunch as 31 May 1940|p=52}}{{efn| According to {{harvtxt|Gilbert|1983|p=437}}, Churchill was in France on 31 May.{{sfn|<!--see also -->Thompson|2008|loc= 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"}}}} After her mother died in 1941, she stayed at [[Chequers]], the prime minister's country home in [[Buckinghamshire]].

[[R. A. Butler]], then [[Minister of Education]], recalled a dinner party in Eden's flat above the Foreign Office following the [[German invasion of the Soviet Union]] in 1941. Attempting to defuse an argument between Churchill and [[Lord Beaverbrook]] about their respective motivation during the [[abdication crisis]] of 1936, Spencer-Churchill, just turned 21, proclaimed with patent improbability that she had three favourites, [[Edward VIII]], [[Leopold III of Belgium]] and the aviator [[Charles Lindbergh]].{{sfn|Butler|1971}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}

=== 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.{{sfnm|Rhodes James|1986|1p=356|2a1=Booth|2a2=Haste|2y=2004|2p=8|ps=. Rhodes James dated this episode to 1947, but Booth and Haste's similar account referred to a dinner party in 1946 hosted by [[Emerald Cunard]].}} In 1950, Eden was divorced from his first wife, [[Beatrice Beckett|Beatrice]] (''née'' Beckett, 1905–1957). Although she was a [[Roman Catholic]] and her church was opposed to divorce, Spencer-Churchill married Eden, who had become [[Foreign Secretary (United Kingdom)|Foreign Secretary]] again in 1951, in a [[civil ceremony]] at [[Caxton Hall]], London, on 14 August 1952. This event drew large crowds, on a level with those earlier in the year for the wedding of film stars [[Elizabeth Taylor]] and [[Michael Wilding]],{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004|loc= chpt. 1}} prompting [[Harold Macmillan]], [[Minister of Housing]], to note that "it's extraordinary how much 'glamour' <!-- he --> [Eden] still has and how popular he is".{{sfn|Catterall|2003|loc= Macmillan, diary ([http://www.cercles.com/review/r14/catterall.htm 13–15 August 1952])}} The [[wedding reception]] was held at [[10 Downing Street]], the official residence of the prime minister, who at the time was Lady Eden's uncle, Churchill.

==== Attitudes to the marriage ====
Until 2019, Eden was one [[Records of prime ministers of the United Kingdom#Divorced|of only two]] British prime ministers to have been divorced (although he was one of ten to have been married twice<ref>[[Ben Schott]], ''The Times'', 27 June 2007. <!-- In July 2019 no British Prime Minister had been married more than twice. --></ref>{{Verify source|date=February 2022}}).{{Citation needed|date=February 2022}} An editorial in the ''[[Church Times]]'' recalled that in 1936 [[Edward VIII]] had faced a choice between keeping his throne and marrying a divorcee. It added that "Mr. Eden's action this week shows how far the climate of public opinion in this matter has changed for the worse".{{sfn|<!--Quoted in -->Broad|1955|p={{pli|https://archive.org/details/siranthonyedenth012634mbp/page/n224|205}}{{spaces|2|thin}}{{free access}}}} The same criticism came from others in the [[Anglican church]], including the [[Anglican Archbishop of Sydney|Archbishop of Sydney]], [[Howard Mowll]], who drew the same parallel. Harold Macmillan, among others, thought such comparisons unfair: "Miss Churchill cannot be compared with [[Wallis Simpson|Mrs Simpson]], who had had two husbands".<!--<ref>''ibid.''</ref>-->{{sfn|Catterall|2003|loc= Macmillan, diary ([http://www.cercles.com/review/r14/catterall.htm 13–15 August 1952])}} However, the marriage also drew the opprobrium of [[Evelyn Waugh]],{{sfnm|Thorpe|2003|1p=379|2a1=Booth|2a2=Haste|2y=2004|2p=2}} a convert to Roman Catholicism after divorce from his first wife, who professed to have been in love with Spencer-Churchill himself{{sfn|Eden|2007|pp=114-115}} and who, a few years earlier, had repeatedly criticised the poet [[John Betjeman]] for his [[Anglo-Catholic]] beliefs.{{sfn|Wilson|2006}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}{{efn|  Lady Avon's brother John had once been engaged to Betjeman's wife, then [[Penelope Chetwode]], daughter of [[Field marshal (United Kingdom)|Field Marshal]] Sir [[Philip Chetwode]].{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=7}} According to {{harvtxt|Wilson|2006|p=94}}, Penelope's love for John Churchill had "waned".}}  Waugh enquired of Lady Eden, "Did you never think that you were contributing to the loneliness of [[Calvary]] by your desertion [of the faith]?"{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=114}}

On the eve of the wedding, [[Jock Colville|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&nbsp;... 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".{{sfn|Colville|1985|p=653|loc= diary (11 August 1952)}} According to the future Lady Avon herself, Churchill's wife [[Clementine Churchill|Clementine]] thought her "too independent and totally unsuitable",{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=123}} while the marriage is said to have exacerbated the antagonism towards Eden of the Churchills' often wayward son [[Randolph Churchill|Randolph]], who, having initially defended his cousin to Waugh, gave her "two years to knock <!-- him --> [Eden] into shape".{{sfn|Thorpe|2003|p=379}}  His subsequent attacks on Eden in the press culminated in a scathing biography, ''The Rise and Fall of Sir Anthony Eden'' (1959).{{Citation needed|date=February 2022}}

The issues relating to the Edens' marriage resurfaced in 1955 when Eden was prime minister. In that year, [[Princess Margaret]], sister of [[Elizabeth II|the Queen]], announced that she had decided not to marry Group Captain [[Peter Townsend (RAF officer)|Peter Townsend]], a divorcé.{{sfn|Townsend|1978|p=238}}<!--<ref>Statement, 31 October 1955</ref>-->  Although recently available evidence suggests that the Eden government was prepared to be reasonably accommodating towards such a marriage and that Margaret would have needed only to renounce her [[right of succession]] to the throne,<ref>{{Cite episode |series=The Queen |network=[[Channel 4]] |date=29 November 2009 |number=<!--part--> 1}}</ref>{{efn| Margaret was then third in the [[line of succession]] after [[Prince Charles]] and [[Princess Anne]] and so, in itself, renouncing her right of succession would have been primarily a technicality.{{Citation needed|date=February 2022}}}} Townsend reflected in the 1970s that:

{{Blockquote|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.|{{harvtxt|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.<ref><!--See, for example, -->{{Cite magazine |last=Cannadine |first=David |date=22 October 1987 |title=The Next Best Man |url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1987/10/22/the-next-best-man/ |url-access=registration |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220207175727/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1987/10/22/the-next-best-man/ |archive-date=7 February 2022 |access-date=7 February 2022 |magazine=[[The New York Review of Books]] |volume=XXXIV}}</ref>

The first five years of her marriage were dominated by Eden's political career and by the effects of a botched operation on his [[gall bladder]] in 1953, which caused lasting problems.<ref name="Annals of Surgery"><!--See generally -->{{Cite journal |last=Braasch |first=John W. |date=November 2003 |title=Anthony Eden's (Lord Avon) biliary tract saga |journal=[[Annals of Surgery]] |volume=238 |issue=5 |pages=772–775 |doi=10.1097/01.sla.0000094443.60313.da |issn=0003-4932 |pmc=1356158 |pmid=14578742}}</ref> Eden's private secretary, [[Evelyn Shuckburgh]], recalled Lady Eden's role in ensuring that the complaint that led to the operation had been diagnosed properly: "When Eden acquired a loving wife, [[Horace Evans, 1st Baron Evans|Sir [Horace] Evans]] was called in&nbsp;...".{{sfn|<!--Quoted in -->Turner|2006|ps=. The extract in Turner refers to "Harold Evans", but this must be a mistake for Horace Evans, the royal physician.}} Before then, Eden had travelled with a tin box containing medicaments that ranged from [[aspirin]]s to [[morphia]] injections.{{sfn|loc= Shuckburgh, quoted |<!--in -->Turner|2006}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}

Historian [[Hugh Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton|Hugh Thomas]] noted that, though "non-political", Lady Avon was interested in foreign affairs, having written a Berlin diary for the literary magazine ''[[Horizon (British magazine)|Horizon]]''.{{sfn|Thomas|1970|p={{pli|{{GBurl|id=1WAJAQAAIAAJ|q="non-political"}}|46}}{{spaces|2|thin}}{{closed access}}}}  Avon maintained many of her wider acquaintances. For example, Cecil Beaton and Greta Garbo visited 10 Downing Street at her invitation in October 1956. They drank vodka and ice, and Beaton recorded Lady Eden's observation that her husband was kept awake by the sound of [[motor scooter]]s,{{sfn|loc= Beaton, diary quoted |<!--in -->Vickers|1994}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} which were growing in popularity among young people in the 1950s. Lady Eden is said to have murmured, "he can't keep away", as Eden, in Beaton's words, "gangled in like a colt" and proclaimed to Garbo that he had always wanted to meet her.{{sfn|loc= Beaton, diary quoted |<!--in -->Vickers|1994|p={{pli|{{GBurl|id=Q3-RAAAAIAAJ|q="gangled in like a colt"}}|236}}{{spaces|2|thin}}{{limited access}}}}

Lady Eden miscarried in 1954, and there were no children.{{sfn|Rhodes James|1986|pp=414-415}}  Her stepson, [[Nicholas Eden, 2nd Earl of Avon|Nicholas]], Eden's surviving son from his first marriage, who succeeded him as 2nd [[Earl of Avon]], served as [[Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State|Under-Secretary of State for Energy]] in [[Premiership of Margaret Thatcher|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.{{sfn|Clark|1998}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}  However, it was not until 6 April 1955 that Eden succeeded him as prime minister, shortly afterwards winning a [[1955 United Kingdom general election|general election]] in which the Conservative Party polled the largest percentage of the popular vote recorded by a party between [[1945 United Kingdom general election|1945]] and the present day. Colville noted that, at a dinner attended by the Queen to mark Churchill's retirement, the [[Anne Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster|Duchess of Westminster]] had put her foot through Lady Eden's train, causing the monarch's consort, the [[Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh|Duke of Edinburgh]], to remark, "that's torn it, in more than one sense".{{sfn|Colville|1985|p=708}}

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 ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'',<ref><!--For example, -->{{Cite news |last=McLachlan |first=Donald |author-link=Donald McLachlan |date=3 January 1956 |title=Waiting for the smack of firm government ... |work=The Daily Telegraph |page=6}}</ref> the wife of whose chairman, [[Lady Pamela Smith|Lady Pamela Berry]] (an ambitious and sometimes spiteful [[society hostess]], described by the biographer of her father, [[F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead|Lord Birkenhead]], as "the politician ''[[manqué]]'' of the second generation"{{sfn|Campbell|1983|p=838}}{{efn| 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".{{sfn|Davenport-Hines|2013|p=279}}}}), was said by some to have had a "blood row" (Macmillan's phrase) with Lady Eden.{{efn|Pamela Berry was another of Lady Eden's acquaintances who had taken accommodation at the Dorchester Hotel during the Second World War.{{sfn|Norwich|2013}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}}}  The latter's attempts to make up this puzzling rift were shunned.{{sfnm|Catterall|2003|1loc= Macmillan, diary (26 July 1956)|2a1=Thorpe|2y=2003|2p=460}}{{efn| 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&nbsp;... her faults are getting worse and she doesn't mellow".{{sfn|Thompson|2003|p=334}}  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''.{{sfn|Thompson|2003}} 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".{{sfn|Baston|2004|loc= footnote 5 to chapter 27}}}}

=== Chatelaine at Downing Street and Chequers ===
[[File:Chequers (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|[[Chequers]] in Buckinghamshire, 2018]]

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".{{sfn|Rhodes James|1986|p=413}}  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.{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004|p=20}}

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 [[fruit tree]]s. However, her successor, [[Lady Dorothy Macmillan]], so keen a [[horticulturalist]] that she sometimes gardened at night, removed yellow and white flowers planted by Lady Eden and replaced them with roses of a "normal [colour]".{{sfn|Horne|1989|p=166}}{{efn| 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&nbsp;... they want me to plant pansies" ("and she didn't like pansies").{{sfn|loc=[[Katharine Macmillan, Viscountess Macmillan of Ovenden|Katharine Macmillan]], quoted |<!--in -->Booth|Haste|2004|p=54}}}}  One episode at Chequers attracted considerable publicity. In January 1956, Lady Eden politely requested the occupant of a farm worker's cottage on the estate to hang her washing where visitors could not see it.{{sfn|Rhodes James|1986|p=412}}  Although it seems that the washing may have been hung across a [[Tilia|lime]] walk, beyond the boundary of the [[cottage garden]] itself,{{sfn|Amory|1985|loc= Fleming, diary (13 January 1956)}} the story was taken up by the ''[[Daily Mirror]]'' as an alleged example of Lady Eden's high-handedness. Coming shortly after attacks in the press on Eden's leadership, the timing was unfortunate.

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{{sfn|Eden|2007}}{{page needed|date=November 2021}} despite his reputation for eating and drinking greedily{{sfn|loc=Macmillan's view, quoted |<!--in -->Thorpe|2010|p={{pli|{{GBurl|id=lzVgMHMwZtwC|p=412}}|412}}{{spaces|2|thin}}{{limited access}}}}{{efn| 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.{{sfn|Thorpe|2010|p=412}}}}), 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".{{efn|  Khrushchev noted that Lady Eden "bit her tongue" at this answer, which he admitted was "a little rude".{{sfn|Crankshaw|1971|p=444}}}}  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".{{sfn|Crankshaw|1971|p=444}}

=== Suez Crisis ===
As the [[Suez Crisis]] climaxed in 1956, the Labour Party opposed Anglo-French attacks on Egypt. On 1 November, Lady Eden found herself sitting next to [[Dora Gaitskell]], wife of the Labour leader, in the gallery of the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]], whose sitting was suspended, due to uproar, for the first time since 1924. "Can you stand it?" she asked, to which, according to one version, the seasoned Gaitskell replied, "the boys must have their fun".{{sfn|Thomas|1970}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} (An alternative version is that Gaitskell responded, "What I can't stand is the mounted police charging the crowds outside".{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004|p=27|ps=. Lady Avon's memoir of 2007 appears to confirm this version.}})  Three days later, Lady Eden attended, out of curiosity, an anti-government "Law not War" demonstration in [[Trafalgar Square]] but thought it sensible to withdraw when she was recognised with friendly cheers.{{sfnm|1a1=Booth|1a2=Haste|1y=2004|1p=27|2a1=Sandbrook|2y=2005}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}

==== "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.{{sfn|Augarde|1991|loc=speech at Gateshead (20 November 1956)|p=71:19}} The future Lady Avon later described this observation as "silly, really idiotic",{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004|p=25}} though it remains probably the most quoted utterance of the whole crisis.{{Original research inline|date=February 2022}} 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".<ref>{{Cite web |date=29 September 2010 |title=The absence of David Miliband is the gash in Labour's heart |url=https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/the-absence-of-david-miliband-is-the-gash-in-labour-s-heart-6519071.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220208210141/https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/the-absence-of-david-miliband-is-the-gash-in-labour-s-heart-6519071.html |archive-date=8 February 2022 |access-date=8 February 2022 |website=Evening Standard}}<!--Anne McElvoy in London ''Evening Standard'', 29 September 2010--></ref>  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 (United Kingdom)|Cabinet Secretary]] Sir [[Gus O'Donnell|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&nbsp;... Yet, as the Countess of Avon so vividly pointed out, it can be impossible to keep public scrutiny at bay altogether".<ref>''The Times'', leading article, 17 December 2011.</ref>{{Verify source|date=February 2022}} 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."<ref name=telegraph1566824/>

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 [[décor]] he described as green. There he was able to enjoy two [[sanguine]]s by [[André Derain]] and a bronze of a girl in her bath by [[Degas]] that [[Alexander Korda]] had given the Edens as a wedding present.{{sfn|Eden|1960|p=550}}

=== Political influence ===
During this period, some thought they detected undue influence by Lady Eden over her husband. For example, [[Cynthia Jebb, Lady Gladwyn|Lady Jebb]], wife of the British ambassador in Paris, alluded in her diary to [[Shakespeare]]'s [[Lady Macbeth]] and referred to "Clarissa's war".{{sfn|Jebb|1995|p=191}} (It should be borne in mind, however, that her husband, [[Gladwyn Jebb|Sir Gladwyn]], a "figure of some grandeur, if not hauteur",{{sfn|Thorpe|2010|page= 472|loc= note 35}} was furious at his exclusion from an Anglo-French summit in Paris two weeks before the Suez invasion.{{sfnm|<!--See -->Turner|2006|Thorpe|2010|ps=. 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.}}{{pages needed|date=February 2022}}) In December 1956, [[Walter Monckton]], a member of Eden's government who opposed the Suez invasion, apparently told a Labour MP, [[Anthony Wedgwood Benn]], that Lady Eden was a powerful force in politics, with great influence on her husband, and that "now she knows <!-- he --> [Monckton] opposed Anthony she won't have anything to do with him".{{sfn|Benn|1994|p=220|loc= diary (15 December 1956)}} Monckton claimed, among other things, that, during a rail strike in 1955, Eden, by then prime minister, had, at his wife's urging, taken a tougher public stance concerning the railwaymen than that advised by Monckton, as [[Minister of Labour (United Kingdom)|Minister of Labour]], and senior civil servants{{sfnm|Benn|1994|1p=221|1loc= diary (15 December 1956)|Kynaston|2009}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} (although there is evidence that Churchill had also privately advocated to Eden the need for a strong line).{{sfn|Roberts|1994|p=276}}

In private correspondence just after Suez, the Oxford historian [[Hugh Trevor-Roper]] derided Lady Eden's remark about "the Suez Canal flowing through [her] drawing room" and declared not only that the "vain and foolish" Eden was "wholly managed" by her, but that she would listen only to Cecil Beaton, whom he described (with reference to the [[Svengali]] of the last Russian czarina [[Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)|Alexandra]]) as her "[[Rasputin]]".{{sfn|Davenport-Hines|<!--2005?-->2006}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}

=== Protective influence ===
Less dramatically, there were suggestions that Anthony Eden's touchiness and over-sensitivity to criticism, characteristics frequently remarked upon by colleagues,{{sfnm|<!--For example, -->Nutting|1967|Butler|1971|3loc= [[Edward Boyle, Baron Boyle of Handsworth|Lord Boyle]], quoted |<!--in -->Thompson|1971|3p= |Deedes|2004|4p={{pli|{{GBurl|id=NllFvQ9u0x0C|p=86}}|86}}{{spaces|2|thin}}{{limited access}}}}{{pages needed|date=February 2022}} were exacerbated by Lady Eden (described by historian [[Barry Turner (author)|Barry Turner]], without explanation, as "equally touchy"{{sfn|Turner|2006|p={{pli|{{GBurl|id=ZUMuAQAAIAAJ|q="equally touchy"}}|158}}{{spaces|2|thin}}{{limited access}}}}). One of Eden's private secretaries claimed that she had a habit of "stirring up Anthony when he didn't need it".{{sfn|loc=Sir [[Philip de Zulueta]], quoted |<!--in -->Horne|1988|p=375}} However, Eden's biographer [[D. R. Thorpe]] concluded that such imputations arose from a misreading of the Edens' relationship, also noting that, during Suez, the only two people in whom Eden could confide without inhibition were his wife and the Queen.{{sfn|Thorpe|2003|p=500}} Indeed, as historian [[Ben Pimlott]] put it, "if Lady Eden came to believe that the Suez Canal flowed through her drawing room, the Queen must have felt pretty damp as well".{{sfn|Pimlott|1996|p={{pli|{{GBurl|id=m7whAQAAIAAJ|q="if Lady Eden came to believe that the Suez Canal flowed through her drawing room, the Queen must have felt pretty damp as well"}}|253}}{{spaces|2|thin}}{{closed access}}}} David Dutton, another (not notably sympathetic{{example needed|date=February 2022}}) biographer of Eden, noted that "some observers believed that Clarissa was excessively protective and tended to exacerbate Eden's natural volatility" but also remarked on her devoted companionship and that "during the dark days of the Suez Crisis, [she] was at his side, supportive throughout".{{sfn|Dutton|1997}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}{{efn| 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 inline|date=February 2022}} Despite strong evidence of [[Sarah Jane Brown|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&nbsp;... made her deeply angry when he was under attack, and this could heighten his paranoia about those who were seeking to do him down".{{sfn|Seldon|Lodge|2010|p=190}} 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 Thatcher|Denis]], the sort of [[moral support]] that it was difficult for others to provide.{{sfnm|Moore|2013|Aitken|2013}}{{pages needed|date=February 2022}}}}

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.{{sfn|Eden|1960|p=550}} There is some evidence also that, when he was Foreign Secretary, Lady Eden had influenced (or, at any rate, endorsed) his patterns of work. A later Foreign Secretary, [[Douglas Hurd]], observed that, though he worked hard, Eden did not keep office hours and often spent mornings working in bed. For example, on 29 December 1952, Eden wrote: "Raining and cold. Clarissa says that this is the right way to run the F[oreign].O[ffice]. Lie in bed, direct office by telephone and read [[Delacroix]]".{{clarify|date=February 2022|reason=painter [[Eugène Delacroix]]?}}{{sfn|Hurd|2010|pp=351-352}}{{efn| 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|date=February 2022}}}}

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",{{sfnm|1a1=Hardy|1a2=Holmes|1y=2009|1p={{pli|{{GBurl|id=0TxAAQAAIAAJ|q="very brave" "very patriotic" "absolutely just"}}|547}}{{spaces|2|thin}}{{limited access}}|Kynaston|2009}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} while opining to another acquaintance that his policy had been "childish folly".<ref><!-- Isaiah Berlin (ed Hardy & Holmes, 2009) ''Enlightening: Letters 1946–1960'': see -->{{Cite news |last=Carey |first=John |date=7 June 2009 |title=Enlightening: Letters 1946 1960 by Isaiah Berlin, ed Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes |url=https://www.thetimes.com/comment/register/article/enlightening-letters-1946-1960-by-isaiah-berlin-ed-henry-hardy-and-jennifer-holmes-sw6dd7xmlqj |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220210053343/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/enlightening-letters-1946-1960-by-isaiah-berlin-ed-henry-hardy-and-jennifer-holmes-sw6dd7xmlqj |archive-date=10 February 2022 |access-date=10 February 2022 |work=The Sunday Times}}</ref>{{efn| Berlin seems to have had a reputation for saying one thing to one person and something different to another.<ref><!-- see-->Jeremy Lewis in ''The Oldie'', February 2016, at page 37.</ref>{{Verify source|date=February 2022}}}} The future Lady Avon herself recalled that, though she sought to "bolster up" her husband and scanned the newspapers for anything that she thought he ought to know, she did not feel she "knew enough about what was going on to try and interfere in any way".{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004|p=26}} Even so, her knowledge of the inner workings of government was such that she was able to record in her diary the precise stance, at a critical point of the Suez operation, of every member of the [[Cabinet of the United Kingdom|Cabinet]]:{{blockquote| [E]ach was asked in turn what they felt about going on. [[Selwyn Lloyd|Selwyn [Lloyd]]], [[Alec Home]], Harold [Macmillan], [[Alan Lennox-Boyd, 1st Viscount Boyd of Merton|Alan [Lennox-Boyd]]], [[Antony Head]], [[Peter Thorneycroft|Peter [Thorneycroft]]], [[David Eccles, 1st Viscount Eccles|[Sir David] Eccles]], [[Duncan Sandys|Duncan [Sandys]]], [[James Stuart, 1st Viscount Stuart of Findhorn|James Stuart]], [[Gwilym Lloyd George|Gwilym [Lloyd George]]], and [[Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone|[Lord] Hailsham]] were for going on. [[David Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Earl of Kilmuir|[Lord] Kilmuir]], [[Derick Heathcoat-Amory, 1st Viscount Amory|[Derick] Heathcoat Amory]], [[Iain Macleod|[Iain] Macleod]], [[Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury|Bobbety [Lord Salisbury]]], [[Patrick Buchan-Hepburn]] were for doing whatever Anthony wanted and [[George Douglas-Hamilton, 10th Earl of Selkirk|Lord Selkirk]] was unintelligible.{{sfnm|Eden|2007|1p=253|1loc=diary<!-- Referring to a meeting of the Cabinet on --> (4 November 1956)|<!-- see-->2a1=Thorpe|2y=2003|2p=528|3a1=Hennessy|3y=2006|3p=446}}}}

=== Aftermath of Suez ===
==== Goldeneye ====
[[File:GoldeneyeEstate.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|[[Goldeneye (estate)|Goldeneye]] in Jamaica, 2011]]

The damage caused by the Suez Crisis to the Prime Minister's already frail health persuaded the Edens to seek a month's [[rest cure]] at "[[Goldeneye (estate)|Goldeneye]]", Ian Fleming's "plain, low-roofed" [[bungalow]]{{sfn|Rankin|2011|p=146}} on the north coast of [[Colony of Jamaica|Jamaica]]. Lady Eden's concern for her husband's health appears to have been decisive in the choice of destination. Still, it was regarded by many, including Macmillan and the government's [[Chief Whip]], [[Edward Heath]], as politically unwise.{{sfn|Heath|1998|pp=175-176}} In addition, although Goldeneye had a [[private beach]] and a large living room with glassless [[louvre window]]s that enabled "the moist tropical air [to] blow through",{{sfn|Rankin|2011|p=147}} Fleming's close friend, the journalist [[Denis Hamilton]], who visited Goldeneye around that time, recalled a "shack-like house" which Fleming "went around pretending [was]&nbsp;... a great palace&nbsp;... a miniature [[The Ritz Hotel, London|Ritz]]".<ref>Quoted in ''[[Antiques Trade Gazette]]'', 29 September 2012.</ref>{{Full citation needed|date=February 2022}}{{efn| Hamilton appears to have visited Fleming in Jamaica while he was writing ''[[From Russia, with Love (novel)|From Russia, with Love]]'', which was published in 1957.{{Citation needed|date=February 2022}}}} Its bedrooms have been described as "insignificant and small".{{sfn|Parker|2014|p=21}} Ann Fleming warned Lady Eden about some of its primitive aspects. She suggested that [[Torquay]], a [[seaside resort]] in the southwest of England, and a sun lamp might have been preferable.{{sfn|Amory|1985}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} However, Lady Eden insisted that "Berkshire [Chequers] or somewhere instead" would not have been suitable: "I thought if we didn't go to Jamaica, he was going to drop down dead, literally".{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004|p=29}}{{efn| 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&nbsp;... and Rossdale's [his doctor's] cocaine makes me feel giddy".{{sfn|<!-- quoted in -->Roberts|2008|p=298}} 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.{{sfn|Crankshaw|1971|p=443}}}}

Installed in Jamaica after a good deal of secrecy and close liaison between Downing Street and Ian Fleming's secretary, Una Trueblood,<ref>Mark Edmonds, quoting Una Trueblood, in ''Sunday Times'', 4 October 2012.</ref>{{Full citation needed|date=February 2022}}{{efn| Despite Lady Eden's close friendship with Ann Fleming, it appears that, because of the need for secrecy, the initial approach to Ian Fleming was made by a senior government minister, [[Alan Lennox-Boyd]], who gave the impression that he himself wanted Goldeneye for a holiday.{{sfn|Davenport-Hines|2013|p=60}} Una Trueblood was probably the model for Mary Trueblood, a glamorous [[MI6]] secretary in Fleming's ''[[Dr. No (novel)|Dr. No]]'' (1958).{{Citation needed|date=February 2022}}}} the Edens were temporary neighbours of Noël Coward who thought Goldeneye "perfectly ghastly"{{sfn|<!--Quoted in -->Rankin|2011|pp=146, 358}}{{efn| Coward thought Goldenye looked like a [[Clinic|medical centre]] and referred to it as "Goldeneye, nose and throat".<ref name="John Ure">{{Cite journal |last=Ure |first=John |author-link=John Ure (diplomat) |date=10 September 2014 |title=[Untitled review] |journal=Country Life |volume=208 |issue=37 |page=140}}</ref> 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"{{mdash}}"his guests remembered all those delicious meals had put into his books".{{sfn|Richards|1968}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}}} and presented them{{mdash}}"poor dears"{{mdash}}with a basket of [[caviare]], [[pâté de foie gras]] and champagne.{{sfn|Pearson|1966}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} Coward also sent [[Frank Cooper's]] marmalade and [[Huntley and Palmer]]'s biscuits, which, according to the future Lady Avon, "was not what we had been looking forward to".{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=259}} As was sometimes the case when Fleming let Goldeneye, he asked his neighbour (and lover) [[Blanche Blackwell]], a member of the influential [[Lindo family]], to ensure that the Edens were properly looked after.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Seymour |first=Miranda |date=7 October 2012 |title=Hot loves of the real Pussy Galore |url=https://www.thetimes.com/world/ireland-world/article/hot-loves-of-the-real-pussy-galore-tfh8867cfh3 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220210211848/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hot-loves-of-the-real-pussy-galore-tfh8867cfh3 |archive-date=10 February 2022 |access-date=10 February 2022 |work=The Sunday Times}}</ref>{{sfn|Parker|2014}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}{{efn| Blackwell (1912–2017), who Ann Fleming described as "my husband's Jamaican wife",<ref name="John Ure" /> has often been cited as the inspiration for the character of [[Pussy Galore]] in Fleming's novel ''[[Goldfinger (novel)|Goldfinger]]''. She died at the age of 104.{{relevance inline|date=February 2022}} Her son [[Chris Blackwell|Chris]] founded [[Island Records]].{{Citation needed|date=February 2022}}{{relevance inline|date=February 2022}}}} Indeed, it seems that Lady Eden's mentioning that Blackwell had been helpful at Goldeneye led Ann Fleming to suspect that her husband and Blackwell were having an affair.<ref>{{Cite news |date=12 August 2017 |title=Blanche Blackwell |url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/blanche-blackwell-obituary-tfjd9jthq |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170816055749/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/blanche-blackwell-obituary-tfjd9jthq |archive-date=16 August 2017 |access-date=11 February 2022 |work=The Times}}</ref> The publicity that the Edens' sojourn attracted is credited by some with boosting Fleming's literary career, including sales of his early novels about [[James Bond]], the first of which, ''[[Casino Royale (novel)|Casino Royale]]'', he had written at Goldeneye in 1952.{{efn|{{harvtxt|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 F. Kennedy|Robert]].<ref><!-- see -->{{Cite journal |last=Dodds |first=Klaus |author-link=Klaus Dodds |date=October 2012 |title=James Bond at 50: Shaken and Stirred |url=https://www.historytoday.com/archive/james-bond-50-shaken-and-stirred |url-status=live |journal=[[History Today]] |volume=62 |issue=10 |page=51 |url-access=subscription |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201124131224/https://www.historytoday.com/archive/james-bond-50-shaken-and-stirred |archive-date=24 November 2020 |access-date=11 February 2022}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=MacIntyre |first=Ben |date=29 September 2012 |title=James Bond's greatest foe: the book critics |url=https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/james-bonds-greatest-foe-the-book-critics-f77h6zw3b30 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220213031525/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/james-bonds-greatest-foe-the-book-critics-f77h6zw3b30 |archive-date=13 February 2022 |access-date=13 February 2022 |work=The Times}}</ref> [[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.{{sfn|<!--see -->von Tunzelmann|2011|pp=184-185}} The first Bond film, ''[[Dr. No (film)|Dr. No]]'', did not appear until 1962.}} The future Lady Avon later recalled her "astonishment" (and Ann Fleming's "rueful embarrassment") at the success of the Bond books,{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=73}} which continued after ''[[From Russia, with Love (novel)|From Russia, with Love]]'' entered the best-seller lists in 1957.{{sfn|Cannadine|2002|p=280}}{{efn| {{harvtxt|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&nbsp;... that it was not the 99.99 per cent pure gold of proper literature".}}

==== Eden's resignation ====
The Edens flew back to England just before Christmas 1956. A young witness of their departure from [[Norman Manley International Airport|Kingston airport]] recalled Lady Eden looking "glacial" and her husband pale.<ref>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.</ref>{{Verify source|date=February 2022}} Lady Eden noted that, on their return, "everyone [was] looking at us with thoughtful eyes".{{sfn|loc=Eden, diary (14 December 1956)|<!--quoted in -->Thorpe|2010|p=356}} Early in January 1957, the Edens stayed with the Queen at [[Sandringham House|Sandringham]], where Eden informed her of his intention to resign as prime minister.{{sfn|Pimlott|1996}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} 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"{{sfn|loc=diary (26 January 1955)|Eden|2007|p=182}}) that she thought politics "a beastly profession&nbsp;... and how greatly I admire your dignity and good humour".{{sfn|Butler|1971}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}{{efn| Writing to Eden on 10 January 1956 to say "goodbye with all my affection to you and to Clarissa", the future prime minister [[Lord Home]] observed that "politics is in some ways a nasty profession&nbsp;...".{{sfn|<!--quoted in -->Thorpe|1996|p={{pli|{{GBurl|id=EHKGAAAAIAAJ|q="politics is in some ways a nasty profession"}}|187}}{{spaces|2|thin}}{{closed access}}}}}} (In 1952 she had told Duff Cooper that she thought modern politics something of a "farce".{{sfn|Charmley|1986}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}})

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".{{sfn|Horne|1989|p=622}} Although there is evidence of a long-standing and lasting rift between Eden and Macmillan,{{sfn|<!--See, for example, -->Thorpe|2010|ps=, citing [[Martin Gilbert]]'s research for his biographical study of Churchill.}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} Eden himself maintained "a friendly (if not conspicuously warm) relationship" with his successor,{{sfn|Horne|1989|p=622}} often being used as a "[[sounding board]]" by Macmillan who occasionally lunched with the Edens at their home.{{sfn|Thorpe|2010|p=409}} Lady Eden, on the other hand, was said to have been consistently vitriolic about Macmillan{{sfn|Horne|1989|p=622}} and recalled to one of Eden's biographers that Churchill had found him "too 'viewy{{'"}}.{{sfn|Thorpe|2010|p=237|ps=. Thorpe produced biographies of both Eden and Macmillan.}} 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,{{sfn|Davenport-Hines|2013|p=4}} 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.<ref name=telegraph1566824/>{{efn| US vice-president [[Richard Nixon]] was the source of Eisenhower's regrets.{{sfn|Eden|2007|loc=editorial note}}{{Failed verification|date=February 2022}} 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.{{sfn|Aitken|2013|p=344}}}}

Shortly after Eden's resignation, he and Lady Eden sailed to New Zealand for a further break. Their [[cabin steward]], on what she described as "the hellship {{RMS|Rangitata||2}}",{{sfn|Rhodes James|1986|p=602}} was the future deputy prime minister [[John Prescott]].{{sfn|Sandbrook|2005}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} Half a century later Prescott recalled that, while kneeling to clean the ship's [[brass]], he had occasion to admire a pair of legs that turned out to be Lady Eden's—"You naturally look, don't you"—after which Anthony Eden tapped him on the head.<ref>Atticus, ''Sunday Times'', 21 January 2007.</ref>{{Failed verification|date=February 2022|reason=https://archive.today/20210723112646/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/atticus-68smvxwp2xn}}{{efn| 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.{{sfn|Hayes|2014}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}}}} When they arrived in New Zealand, which was among the few countries publicly to have supported the Suez operation, the Edens received a rapturous "[[red carpet]]" reception.{{sfn|Eden|2007|p=265}}

== Eden's retirement and death ==
[[File:Saint Mary, Alvediston- churchyard (i) (geograph 3576018).jpg|thumb|Eden's grave in the churchyard of St Mary's, [[Alvediston]], 2013]]
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 & [[Reseda (plant)|mignonette]] from beloved C[larissa]."{{sfn|<!--Quoted in -->Rhodes James|1986|p=620|loc=Eden, diary (11 September 1976)}}

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 (United States)|Democratic Party]], and his English-born wife [[Pamela Harriman|Pamela]]. (Mrs Harriman was Lady Avon's exact contemporary, a débutante of 1938{{sfn|Devonshire|2010|p=85}}{{efn| The [[Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire|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".{{sfn|Devonshire|2010|p=85}}}} who had also taken a room at the Dorchester during the Second World War.{{sfn|Eden|2007}}{{page needed|date=November 2021}} She had previously been married to Lady Avon's cousin Randolph Churchill{{sfn|Hastings|2009}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} 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]] [[Vickers VC10|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 Churchill (1940–2010)|Winston]].{{sfnm|Rhodes James|1986|1p=620|Thorpe|2003|2p=590}}

== 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 [[Robert Rhodes James]] and later D. R. Thorpe to write official biographies of her husband (Churchill's biographer, [[Martin Gilbert]], having previously declined an invitation).<ref>{{Cite news |date=4 February 2015 |title=Sir Martin Gilbert, historian – obituary |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11389474/Sir-Martin-Gilbert-historian-obituary.html |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170918054606/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11389474/Sir-Martin-Gilbert-historian-obituary.html |archive-date=18 September 2017 |access-date=12 February 2022 |work=The Daily Telegraph}}</ref> Published in 1986 and 2003 respectively, both offered a broadly sympathetic 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. In 2003 a [[research study]] by a [[Harvard]] clinician of Eden's medical condition and surgery during the 1950s was published in the US with an acknowledgement of Lady Avon's interest and co-operation.<ref name="Annals of Surgery" />

Lady Avon remained in touch with many influential friends. For example, in the lead-up to the [[Falklands War]] of 1982, the [[Lord Chancellor]], Lord Hailsham, confided during a cabinet meeting that the former US secretary of state [[Henry Kissinger]] had spoken to Lady Avon of the risk of a "[s]ocialist" regime being established in [[National Reorganization Process|Argentina]].{{sfn|Moore|2013|p=707}}{{efn| Kissinger was presumably referring to a possible consequence of Britain's evicting Argentine forces from the Falkland Islands, which they had [[1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands|invaded in April 1982]], or of a political and economic backlash against American interests if the US publicly supported Britain.{{Citation needed|date=February 2022}}}} Lady Avon also attended various [[state occasion]]s, as well as gatherings of former prime ministers and their families. In 1972 (while her husband was still alive), she described to Cecil Beaton the [[Duchess of Windsor]]'s "very strange" and nervous demeanour—"Is this my seat?" "Is this my prayer book?" "What do I do now?"—at the funeral of her husband, the former king Edward VIII,{{sfn|loc=Beaton, diary (5 June 1972)|<!-- quoted in -->Ziegler|1990|p=479}}{{efn| 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.{{sfn|Ziegler|1990|p=479}}}} while thirty years later, Tony Blair's press secretary [[Alastair Campbell]] noted that at a dinner at 10 Downing Street in 2002 to mark the Queen's [[Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II|Golden Jubilee]], attended by five prime ministers and several relatives of deceased prime ministers:{{blockquote|[[Prince Philip]] was deep in conversation with T[ony] B[lair], the Countess of Avon, Macmillan's and [[Douglas-Home]]'s families, and there was lots of reminiscing about life in Number 10.{{sfn|Campbell|2007|p=619|loc= diary entry (29 April 2002)}}{{efn| Invitations to a comparable luncheon to mark the Queen's [[Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II|Diamond Jubilee]] in 2012 were restricted to (surviving) prime ministers and their spouses.{{Citation needed|date=February 2022}}}}}}

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 [[Guy Millard]] (1917–2013), one of Eden's long-serving private secretaries and probably his last surviving close associate, having been with him and Churchill at wartime meetings with [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] and [[Stalin]] and in Downing Street during the Suez Crisis.<ref>James Hughes-Onslow in ''The Oldie'', September 2013.</ref>{{Verify source|date=February 2022}}

=== Longevity ===
Lady Avon was the youngest wife of an incumbent prime minister in the twentieth century.{{Citation needed|date=February 2022}} 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 inline|date=February 2022}} 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.{{sfn|Booth|Haste|2004}}{{page needed|date=February 2022}} 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<ref>{{Cite AV media |title=Married to the Prime Minister |date=6 December 2005 |publisher=Channel 4 |postscript={{snd}} based on {{harvtxt|Booth|Haste|2004}}.}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite AV media |title=Suez: A Very British Crisis |date=31 October 2006 |publisher=[[BBC Television]]}}</ref> The critic [[A. A. Gill]] was among those who praised Avon's erudite performance in the Blair documentary ("{{wt|en|bright as a button}}") while sensing that she appeared not entirely to approve of Cherie Blair.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Gill |first=A. A. |date=11 December 2005 |title=Coming up for airtime |url=https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/coming-up-for-airtime-rjms58gqh6p |url-access=subscription |access-date=12 February 2022 |work=The Times}}</ref>

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.<ref name="telegraph1566824">{{Cite news |last=Farndale |first=Nigel |author-link=Nigel Farndale |date=21 October 2007 |title=Clarissa Eden: A witness to history |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1566824/Clarissa-Eden-A-witness-to-history.html |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180304231741/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1566824/Clarissa-Eden-A-witness-to-history.html |archive-date=4 March 2018 |access-date=8 February 2022 |work=The Daily Telegraph |postscript=. 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.}}</ref> In April 2008 she and Haste appeared at the ''[[Sunday Times]]'' Oxford Literary Festival,<ref>''Sunday Times Culture'', 16 March 2008.</ref>{{Verify source|date=February 2022}} the literature for this event observing that, although Avon was perhaps best known for her lament about "the Suez Canal flowing through [her] drawing room", "she was far more than a drawing-room consort".{{Citation needed|date=February 2022}}

Avon died on 15 November 2021 at her home in London,<ref>{{Cite news |last=Cowell |first=Alan |author-link=Alan Cowell |date=16 November 2021 |title=Clarissa Eden, British Countess and Political Influencer, Dies at 101 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/world/europe/clarissa-eden-dead.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211116235425/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/world/europe/clarissa-eden-dead.html |archive-date=16 November 2021 |access-date=12 February 2022 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> at the age of 101.<ref name="obituary">{{Cite news |date=15 November 2021 |title=The Countess of Avon, independent-minded widow of the prime minister Anthony Eden and niece of Winston Churchill – obituary |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2021/11/15/countess-avon-intellectual-independent-minded-widow-prime-minister/ |url-access=registration |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211115223740/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2021/11/15/countess-avon-intellectual-independent-minded-widow-prime-minister/ |archive-date=15 November 2021 |access-date=8 February 2025 |work=The Telegraph |department=''Telegraph'' Obituaries |language=en-GB |issn=0307-1235}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Haste |first=Cate |date=n.d.<!-- Cate Haste died in April 2021 --> |title=Clarissa Eden obituary |url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/16/clarissa-eden-obituary |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211116154151/https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/16/clarissa-eden-obituary |archive-date=16 November 2021 |access-date=16 November 2021 |website=The Guardian |publication-date=16 November 2021}}</ref> She was the second longest-lived prime ministerial spouse after [[Lady Wilson of Rievaulx]], widow of [[Harold Wilson]], who died in 2018 aged 102.{{Original research inline|certain=y|date=January 2022}} Her funeral took place on 24 November in [[Alvediston]],<ref>{{Cite news |date=17 November 2021 |title=Remembering: The Countess of Avon |url=https://www.salisbury.anglican.org/news/remembering-the-countess-of-avon |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220220094418/https://www.salisbury.anglican.org/news/remembering-the-countess-of-avon |archive-date=20 February 2022 |access-date=20 February 2022 |publisher=[[Diocese of Salisbury]]}}</ref> where she was laid to rest at her husband's side in the [[churchyard]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Vickers |first=Hugo |date=28 November 2021 |title=Clarissa Eden RIP |url=https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/churchill-bulletin/bullertin-162-dec-2021/clarissa-eden-rip/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220220093006/https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/churchill-bulletin/bullertin-162-dec-2021/clarissa-eden-rip/ |archive-date=20 February 2022 |access-date=20 February 2022 |publisher=International Churchill Society}}</ref>

== In popular culture ==
{{More citations needed section|date=February 2022}}
Lady Avon was played by [[Jennifer Daniel]] in [[Ian Curteis]]'s 1979 drama for [[BBC television]], ''Suez 1956''. In 2012 she was portrayed by [[Abigail Cruttenden]] in [[Hugh Whitemore]]'s play about the Suez Crisis, ''A Marvellous Year for Plums'', that opened at the [[Chichester Festival Theatre]].{{citation needed|date=September 2020}} In the first episode of the BBC's ''[[The Hour (2011 TV series)|The Hour]]'', also set in 1956, a television producer Bel Rowley ([[Romola Garai]]) was complimented by one of Eden's press officers for a feature about "Lady Eden at home".<ref>{{Cite episode |series=The Hour |series-link=The Hour (2011 TV series)#ep1 |last=Morgan |first=Abi |author-link=Abi Morgan |network=[[BBC Two]] |date=<!-- broadcast on --> 19 July 2011 |series-no=1 |number=1 |postscript=. In the same scene, Rowley enquired about the health of "Prime Minister Eden", an improbable mode of expression in Britain.}}</ref> In the [[Netflix]] drama series ''[[The Crown (TV series)|The Crown]]'', she was portrayed by [[Anna Madeley]].{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

== Arms ==
{{Infobox COA wide
|image = Clarissa Countess of Avon Achievement.png
|escutcheon = The arms of [[Anthony Eden|Eden]] (Gules on a chevron between three garbs or, banded vert, as many escallops sable.) impaled with [[Jack Churchill (1880–1947)|Spencer-Churchill]] (Quarterly: 1st and 4th, Sable a lion rampant Argent on a canton of the second a cross Gules (Churchill); 2nd and 3rd, quarterly Argent and Gules, in the second and third quarters a fret Or, overall on a bend Sable three escallops of the first (Spencer); in chief, on an escutcheon Argent a cross Gules surmounted by an inescutcheon Azure charged with three fleurs-de-lys Or.)
|supporters = On the dexter side a leopard guardant Or resting the sinister hind paw on a garb Or banded Vert and on the sinister side a like leopard resting the dexter hind paw on a similar garb.
}}

== References ==

=== Notes ===
{{Notelist|30em}}

=== Citations ===
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

=== Bibliography ===
{{Refbegin|30em|indent=y}}
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* {{Cite book
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* {{Cite book
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* {{Cite book
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* {{Cite book
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* {{Cite book
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  | first       = Duchess of
  | author-link = Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/waitformememoir00devo
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  | date        = 2010
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* {{Cite book
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* {{Cite book
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  | first       = Anthony
  | author-link = Anthony Eden
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/fullcirclememoir00eden
  | title       = Full Circle: The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Sir Anthony Eden
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  | publisher   = Cassell
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* {{Cite book
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  | first        = Clarissa
  | url          = https://archive.org/details/clarissaedenmemo0000eden
  | title        = A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden
  | publisher    = Weidenfeld & Nicolson
  | year         = 2007
  | isbn         = 978-0-297-85193-6
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  }}
* {{Cite book
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  | first            = Martin
  | author-link      = Martin Gilbert
  | url              = https://archive.org/details/finesthourwinsto0000gilb
  | title            = Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941
  | publisher        = Heinemann
  | year             = 1983
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  | location         = London
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* {{Cite book
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  | title            = Enlightening: Letters 1946–1960
  | publisher        = Random House
  | year             = 2009
  | isbn             = 978-1-4464-9608-4
  | editor-last      = Hardy
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  | publication-date = 2012
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  | editor-first2    = Jennifer
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* {{Cite book
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  | title       = Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940–45
  | date        = 2009
  | publisher   = HarperCollins
  | isbn        = 978-0-00-734411-6
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* {{Cite book
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  | title       = An Unexpected MP: Confessions of a Political Gossip
  | date        = 2014
  | publisher   = Biteback
  | isbn        = 978-1-84954-724-6
  | url-access  = limited
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Heath
  | first       = Edward
  | author-link = Edward Heath
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/courseofmylifemy0000heat_g5e8
  | title       = The Course of My Life: My Autobiography
  | date        = 1998
  | publisher   = Hodder & Stoughton
  | isbn        = 978-0-340-70852-1
  | location    = London
  | url-access  = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last             = Hennessy
  | first            = Peter
  | author-link      = Peter Hennessy
  | url              = {{GBurl|id=-e8XDLDMPPQC}}
  | title            = Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties
  | publisher        = Penguin UK
  | year             = 2006
  | isbn             = 978-0-14-192931-6
  | publication-date = 2007
  | url-access       = limited
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last             = Horne
  | first            = Alistair
  | author-link      = Alistair Horne
  | url              = https://archive.org/details/haroldmacmillan01horn
  | title            = Harold Macmillan
  | publisher        = Viking
  | year             = 1988
  | isbn             = 978-0-670-80502-0
  | volume           = 1
  | location         = New York<!-- , N.Y., U.S.A. -->
  | publication-date = 1989
  | url-access       = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Horne
  | first       = Alistair
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/haroldmacmillan0000horn
  | title       = Harold Macmillan
  | date        = 1989
  | publisher   = Viking
  | isbn        = 978-0-670-80502-0
  | volume      = 2
  | location    = New York<!-- , N.Y., U.S.A. -->
  | author-mask = {{long dash}}
  | url-access  = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Hurd
  | first       = Douglas
  | author-link = Douglas Hurd
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/chooseyourweapon0000hurd
  | title       = Choose Your Weapons: The British Foreign Secretary: 200 Years of Argument, Success and Failure
  | date        = 2010
  | publisher   = Weidenfeld & Nicolson
  | isbn        = 978-0-297-85334-3
  | location    = London
  | url-access  = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | title        = The Diaries of Cynthia Gladwyn
  | date         = 1995
  | publisher    = Constable
  | isbn         = 978-0-09-473130-1
  | editor-last  = Jebb
  | editor-first = Miles
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Kynaston
  | first       = David
  | author-link = David Kynaston
  | url         = {{GBurl|id=m0q7UMRzIQQC}}
  | title       = Family Britain, 1951–1957
  | date        = 2009
  | publisher   = A&C Black
  | isbn        = 978-1-4088-0349-3
  | url-access  = limited
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | url          = https://archive.org/details/diariesofkenneth0000tyna_j0l9
  | title        = The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan
  | date         = 2001
  | publisher    = Bloomsbury
  | isbn         = 978-1-58234-160-6
  | editor-last  = Lahr
  | editor-first = John
  | editor-link  = John Lahr
  | location     = New York
  | url-access   = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Moore
  | first       = Charles
  | author-link = Charles Moore, Baron Moore of Etchingham
  | url         = {{GBurl|id=lXMFs8427kQC}}
  | title       = Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume One: Not For Turning
  | date        = 2013
  | publisher   = Penguin UK
  | isbn        = 978-1-84614-649-7
  | url-access  = limited
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | url              = {{GBurl|id=uXLhAgAAQBAJ}}
  | title            = The Duff Cooper Diaries: 1915–1951
  | publisher        = Orion
  | year             = 2005
  | isbn             = 978-1-78022-750-4
  | editor-last      = Norwich
  | editor-first     = John Julius
  | editor-link      = John Julius Norwich
  | publication-date = 2014
  | url-access       = limited
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last             = Norwich
  | first            = John Julius
  | url              = https://archive.org/details/darlingmonsterle0000coop_z4y9
  | title            = Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Son John Julius Norwich, 1939–1952
  | publisher        = The Overlook Press
  | year             = 2013
  | isbn             = 978-1-4683-0922-5
  | location         = New York<!-- , NY -->
  | publication-date = 2014
  | author-mask      = {{long dash}}
  | url-access       = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Nutting
  | first       = Anthony
  | author-link = Anthony Nutting
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/noendoflessons00nutt
  | title       = No End of a Lesson; the Story of Suez
  | date        = 1967
  | publisher   = C. N. Potter
  | location    = New York
  | url-access  = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Oxford
  | first       = Margot
  | author-link = Margot Asquith
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.17430
  | title       = More Memories
  | date        = 1933
  | publisher   = Cassell and Company Limited
  | location    = London
  | url-access  = <!-- free -->
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Parker
  | first       = Matthew
  | author-link = Matthew Parker (author)
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/goldeneyewherebo0000park
  | title       = Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica
  | date        = 2014
  | publisher   = Hutchinson
  | isbn        = 978-0-09-195410-9
  | location    = London
  | url-access  = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Pearson
  | first       = John
  | author-link = John Pearson (author)
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/lifeofianfleming00pear
  | title       = The Life of Ian Fleming
  | date        = 1966
  | publisher   = McGraw-Hill
  | location    = New York
  | url-access  = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Pimlott
  | first       = Ben
  | author-link = Ben Pimlott
  | title       = The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II
  | date        = 1996
  | publisher   = HarperCollins
  | isbn        = 978-0-00-255494-7
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Rankin
  | first       = Nicholas
  | author-link = Nicholas Rankin
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/ianflemingscomma0000rank
  | title       = Ian Fleming's Commandos: The Story of 30 Assault Unit in WWII
  | date        = 2011
  | publisher   = Faber
  | isbn        = 978-0-571-25062-2
  | location    = London
  | url-access  = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Rhodes James
  | first       = Robert
  | author-link = Robert Rhodes James
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/anthonyeden0000jame_r8l5
  | title       = Anthony Eden
  | date        = 1986
  | publisher   = Weidenfeld and Nicolson
  | isbn        = 978-0-297-78989-5
  | location    = London
  | url-access  = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | title        = The Wit of Noël Coward
  | date         = 1968
  | publisher    = Frewin
  | isbn         = 978-0-09-089040-8
  | editor-last  = Richards
  | editor-first = Dick
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last             = Roberts
  | first            = Andrew
  | author-link      = Andrew Roberts (historian)
  | url              = https://archive.org/details/eminentchurchill00robe_0
  | title            = Eminent Churchillians
  | publisher        = Phoenix
  | year             = 1994
  | isbn             = 978-1-85799-213-7
  | publication-date = 1995
  | url-access       = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last             = Roberts
  | first            = Andrew
  | url              = https://archive.org/details/masterscommander00andr
  | title            = Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941–1945
  | publisher        = Harper
  | year             = 2008
  | isbn             = 978-0-06-122857-5
  | location         = New York
  | publication-date = 2009
  | author-mask      = {{long dash}}
  | url-access       = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last             = Sandbrook
  | first            = Dominic
  | author-link      = Dominic Sandbrook
  | url              = {{GBurl|id=ukIoBgAAQBAJ}}
  | title            = Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles
  | publisher        = Little, Brown Book Group
  | year             = 2005
  | isbn             = 978-0-349-14127-5
  | publication-date = 2015
  | url-access       = limited
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Seldon
  | first       = Anthony
  | author-link = Anthony Seldon
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/brownat100000seld
  | title       = Brown at 10
  | last2       = Lodge
  | first2      = Guy
  | date        = 2010
  | publisher   = Biteback
  | isbn        = 978-1-84954-069-8
  | location    = London
  | url-access  = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Thomas
  | first       = Hugh
  | author-link = Hugh Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton
  | title       = The Suez Affair
  | date        = 1970
  | publisher   = Penguin
  | isbn        = 978-0-14-021156-6
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last      = Thompson
  | first     = Alan
  | title     = The Day Before Yesterday: An Illustrated History of Britain from Attlee to Macmillan
  | date      = 1971
  | publisher = Sidgwick and Jackson
  | isbn      = 978-0-283-48476-6
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last             = Thompson
  | first            = Julian
  | author-link      = Julian Thompson (Royal Marines officer)
  | url              = {{GBurl|id=gdRW9HZe-UwC}}
  | title            = Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory
  | publisher        = Pan Macmillan
  | year             = 2008
  | isbn             = 978-0-330-50845-2
  | publication-date = 2009
  | url-access       = limited
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last       = Thompson
  | first      = Laura
  | url        = https://archive.org/details/lifeincoldclimat0000thom_r9i7
  | title      = Life in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford: A Portrait of a Contradictory Woman
  | date       = 2003
  | publisher  = Review
  | isbn       = 978-0-7472-4574-2
  | location   = London
  | url-access = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Thorpe
  | first       = D. R.
  | author-link = D. R. Thorpe
  | title       = Alec Douglas-Home
  | date        = 1996
  | publisher   = Sinclair-Stevenson
  | isbn        = 978-1-85619-277-4
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last             = Thorpe
  | first            = D. R.
  | url              = https://archive.org/details/edenlifetimesofa0000thor
  | title            = Eden: The Life and Times of Anthony Eden, First Earl of Avon, 1897–1977
  | publisher        = Pimlico
  | year             = 2003
  | isbn             = 978-0-7126-6505-6
  | location         = London
  | publication-date = 2004
  | author-mask      = {{long dash}}
  | url-access       = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Thorpe
  | first       = D. R.
  | url         = {{GBurl|id=lzVgMHMwZtwC}}
  | title       = Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan
  | date        = 2010
  | publisher   = Random House
  | isbn        = 978-1-4090-5932-5
  | author-mask = {{long dash}}
  | url-access  = limited
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Townsend
  | first       = Peter
  | author-link = Peter Townsend (RAF officer)
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/timechanceautobi00town
  | title       = Time and Chance: An Autobiography
  | date        = 1978
  | publisher   = Collins
  | isbn        = 978-0-00-211857-6
  | location    = London
  | url-access  = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = Trumpington
  | first       = Jean
  | author-link = Jean Barker, Baroness Trumpington
  | url         = {{GBurl|id=35ebAgAAQBAJ}}
  | title       = Coming Up Trumps: A Memoir
  | date        = 2014
  | publisher   = Pan Macmillan
  | isbn        = 978-1-4472-6535-1
  | url-access  = limited
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last             = Turner
  | first            = Barry
  | author-link      = Barry Turner (author)
  | url              = {{GBurl|id=HmyIS4E3K_QC}}
  | title            = Suez 1956: The Inside Story of the First Oil War
  | publisher        = Hodder & Stoughton
  | year             = 2006
  | isbn             = 978-1-4447-6485-7
  | publication-date = 2012
  | url-access       = limited
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last             = Vickers
  | first            = Hugo
  | author-link      = Hugo Vickers
  | url              = {{GBurl|id=TflfqgmdhaQC}}
  | title            = Loving Garbo: The Story of Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton and Mercedes de Acosta
  | publisher        = Random House
  | year             = 1994
  | isbn             = 978-1-4464-9969-6
  | publication-date = 2012
  | url-access       = limited
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last        = von Tunzelmann
  | first       = Alex
  | author-link = Alex von Tunzelmann
  | url         = https://archive.org/details/redheatconspirac0000vont
  | title       = Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean
  | date        = 2011
  | publisher   = Henry Holt and Co.
  | isbn        = 978-0-8050-9067-3
  | location    = New York
  | url-access  = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last             = Wilson
  | first            = A. N.
  | author-link      = A. N. Wilson
  | url              = https://archive.org/details/betjeman0000wils_z9p6
  | title            = Betjeman
  | publisher        = Arrow
  | year             = 2006
  | isbn             = 978-0-09-949837-7
  | location         = London
  | publication-date = 2007
  | url-access       = registration
  }}
* {{Cite book
  | last             = Ziegler
  | first            = Philip
  | author-link      = Philip Ziegler
  | url              = https://archive.org/details/kingedwardviii00zieg
  | title            = King Edward VIII
  | publisher        = Knopf
  | year             = 1990
  | isbn             = 978-0-394-57730-2
  | publication-date = 1991
  | url-access       = registration
  }}
{{refend}}

== External links ==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20100225190818/http://www.topfoto.co.uk/gallery/ClarissaEden/default.htm  Clarissa Eden – a memoir: photographic images]
* {{NPG name |id=63377}}

{{Spouses of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom}}
{{Winston Churchill}}
{{Anthony Eden|state=collapsed}}

{{authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eden, Clarissa}}
[[Category:1920 births]]
[[Category:2021 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century English writers]]
[[Category:20th-century English women]]
[[Category:21st-century English memoirists]]
[[Category:21st-century English women writers]]
[[Category:British debutantes]]
[[Category:People from Kensington]]
[[Category:Writers from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea]]
[[Category:English people of American descent]]
[[Category:English people of Dutch descent]]
[[Category:Spouses of prime ministers of the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:British countesses by marriage|Avon]]
[[Category:English women centenarians]]
[[Category:English women memoirists]]
[[Category:Spencer-Churchill family|Clarissa]]
[[Category:Eden family|Clarissa]]
[[Category:Wives of knights]]
[[Category:Family of Winston Churchill]]