History of Sir Winston Churchill - GOV.UK GOV.UK Sir Winston Churchill Conservative 1951 to 1955, 1940 to 1945 Born 30 November 1874, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire Died 1951 to 1955, 1940 to 1945 Political party Education Act 1944: raised the school leavers age to 14; introduction of the 11+. Interesting facts Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his many published works. More information including archive footage can be found at the Churchill War Rooms. Winston Churchill was an inspirational statesman, writer, orator and leader who led Britain to victory in the Second World War. He served as Conservative Prime Minister twice - from 1940 to 1945 (before being defeated in the 1945 general election by the Labour leader Clement Attlee) and from 1951 to 1955.

David Cameron’s Favourite Past Prime Minister Winston Churchill was born on 30 November 1874, in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire and was of rich, aristocratic ancestry. Although achieving poor grades at school, his early fascination with militarism saw him join the Royal Cavalry in 1895. As a soldier and part-time journalist, Churchill travelled widely, including trips to Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt and South Africa. Churchill was elected as Conservative MP for Oldham in 1900, before defecting to the Liberal Party in 1904 and spending the next decade climbing the ranks of the Liberal government. He was First Lord of the Admiralty (the civil/political head of the Royal Navy) by the time of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, which he created. Heavily criticised for this error, he resigned from this position and travelled to the Western Front to fight himself. The interwar years saw Churchill again ‘cross the floor’ from the Liberals, back to the Conservative Party. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924, when he controversially opted for Britain to re-join the Gold Standard.

Following the Tory electoral defeat in 1929, Churchill lost his seat and spent much of the next 11 years out of office, mainly writing and making speeches. Although he was alone in his firm opposition to Indian Independence, his warnings against the Appeasement of Nazi Germany were proven correct when the Second World War broke out in 1939. Following Neville Chamberlain ’s resignation in 1940, Churchill was chosen to succeed him as Prime Minister of an all-party coalition government. Churchill, who also adopted the self-created position of Minister for Defence, was active both in administrative and diplomatic functions in prosecuting the British war effort. Some of his most memorable speeches were given in this period, and are credited with stimulating British morale during periods of great hardship. However, Labour leader Clement Attlee ’s unexpected General Election victory in 1945 saw Churchill out of office and once again concentrating on public speaking. In his 1946 speech in the USA, the instinctive pro-American famously declared that “an iron curtain has descended across the Continent”, and warned of the continued danger from a powerful Soviet Russia.

By his re-election in 1951, Churchill was, in the words of Roy Jenkins, “gloriously unfit for office”. Ageing and increasingly unwell, he often conducted business from his bedside, and while his powerful personality and oratory ability endured, the Prime Minister’s leadership was less decisive than during the war. His second term was most notable for the Conservative Party’s acceptance of Labour’s newly created Welfare State, and Churchill’s effect on domestic policy was limited. His later attempts at decreasing the developing Cold War through personal diplomacy failed to produce significant results, and poor health forced him to resign in 1955, making way for his Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, Anthony Eden . Churchill died in 1965, and was honoured with a state funeral.

Written by Ben Draper and Jak Brown, Mile End Group Help us improve GOV.UK Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon (Politician) - Pics, Videos, Dating, & News Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon Female Born Jun 28, 1920 Anne Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon is the widow of Sir Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon (1897â1977), who was British Prime Minister from 1955-1957. She married Eden in 1952, becoming Lady Eden in 1954 when he was made a Knight of the Garter and Countess of Avon in 1961 on his elevation to the peerage. Her memoir, sub-titled From Churchill to Eden, was published in 2007 under the name of Clarissa Eden.… Read More related links Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon. CHILDHOOD 1920 Birth Born on June 28, 1920.

TEENAGE 1936 16 Years Old Attempting to defuse an argument between Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook about their respective motivation during the Abdication crisis of 1936, Lady Avon, just turned twenty-one, proclaimed with patent improbability that she had three favourites, King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, King Leopold III of Belgium and the aviator Charles Lindbergh. (All three men, for various reasons, would not have appealed much to Churchill at that point in the war.) Show Less In 1937 Lady Avon studied art in Paris. … Read More Her mother had asked the British Ambassador, 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 cafÃ© society parties. Among the friends Lady Avon made in Paris were the monocled Fitzroy Maclean, a future politician and adventurer who was then third secretary at the embassy, and the writer Marthe Bibesco.

Together with two female contemporaries, she made a visit to the Folies BergÃ¨re, an unusual destination for sixteen 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' Read Less In the summer of 1937 Lady Avon accompanied Julian, Earl of Oxford & Asquith (grandson of Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith) and his mother, Katherine, on a tour, mainly by third class rail, across the Apennines in the Tuscany region of Italy. … Read More Among other artistic treasures, she saw for the first time the fifteenth century frescos 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: "in an age of violence he went on painting clearly and calmly". Read Less Show Less When Lady Avon 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 that associated with the actress Marlene Dietrich after the latter's appearance in the film, Morocco (1930). 1938 was Lady Avon's "coming out" year and she was regarded as "one of the more notable dÃ©butantes" in a "vintage year for beautiful girls", but, having mixed with older and more sophisticated people in Paris, she seems 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" - and was never presented at Court. Another dÃ©butante of 1938, Deborah Mitford, later Duchess of Devonshire, recalled her exhibiting "more than a whiff of Greta Garbo in a dress by Maggy Rouff of Paris". … Read More Among those with whom Lady Avon danced at that year's Liberal Ball was the future double agent Donald Maclean who complained that she was too smart to be "a proper Liberal girl like the Bonham-Carters or the Asquiths".

Read Less 1939 19 Years Old In 1939 Lady Avon spent another four months in Paris and in August of that year travelled to Romania as guest of the novelist Elizabeth Bibesco and her husband Antoine (Elizabeth's mother, Margot Asquith, having been left distraught at the conclusion of her daughter's visit to her in London earlier in the year). … Read More Lady Avon only just managed to return to England - on one of the last flights out of Bucharest - before the start of the Second World War. Read Less TWENTIES Show Less In 1940, encouraged by economist Roy Harrod, Lady Avon went to Oxford to study philosophy, though not as an undergraduate because of her lack of qualifications. … Read More While there she became associated with, among other leading academics, Isaiah Berlin and Maurice Bowra. Lady Antonia Fraser, whose father, later Lord Longford, was a Fellow of Christ Church, has described her as "the don's delight". For a short while she was tutored by A. J. Ayer, a future Wykeham Professor of Logic known for his libidinous lifestyle, although his womanising was not apparently extended to her.

Read Less When Lady Avon moved back to London she decoded ciphers in the Communications Department of the Foreign Office, where her future husband was the Secretary of State from 1940-5. There was some further contact during the war by virtue of the circles in which she and Eden both moved and through her uncle Winston, who became Prime Minister in 1940. An illustration of her occasional proximity to the centre of power was that, between meetings of the War Cabinet on 30 May 1940, when the Dunkirk evacuation was at its height, she was present when Churchill lunched with her parents and the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. … Read More Lady Avon has described this occasion as "a nightmare, with news of people's deaths coming in ". Read Less 1941 21 Years Old After her mother's death in 1941, she stayed at Chequers, the Prime Minister's country home in Buckinghamshire. R.A. Butler, then a junior Minister, recalled a dinner party in Edenâs flat above the Foreign Office, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

1947 27 Years Old A more defined relationship with Eden, who was 23 years older than Lady Avon, developed gradually after they had sat next to each other at a dinner party in about 1947. Eden had been monopolised for much of the meal by a lady on his other side and afterwards, in an undertone, invited Lady Avon out to dinner. In 1950 Eden was divorced from his first wife, Beatrice, nÃ©e Beckett (1905â57). THIRTIES 1951 31 Years Old Although she was a Roman Catholic and her church was opposed to divorce, Lady Avon married Eden, who had become Foreign Secretary again in 1951, in a civil ceremony at Caxton Hall, London on 14 August 1952. … Read More 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, prompting Harold Macmillan, Minister of Housing, to note that "it's extraordinary how much 'glamour' he Eden still has and how popular he is".

The reception was held at 10, Downing Street, the Prime Minister's official residence.<br /><br /> Eden remains the only British Prime Minister to have been divorced (although he was one of nine to have been married twice). There was criticism of the marriage in the Church Times - "Mr. Eden's action this week shows how far the climate of public opinion in this matter has changed for the worse" - and from some others in the Anglican church, including the Archbishop of Sydney, who drew parallels with Edward VIII's having given up the throne to marry an American divorcÃ©e. Macmillan, among others, thought such comparisons unfair: "Miss Churchill cannot be compared with Mrs Simpson, who had had two husbands" However, Lady Avon's decision drew also the opprobrium of Evelyn Waugh, a convert to Catholicism after divorce from his first wife, who professed to have been in love with Lady Avon himself and, a few years earlier, had repeatedly berated the poet John Betjeman for his Anglo-Catholic beliefs. Waugh enquired of Lady Avon, "Did you never think that you were contributing to the loneliness of Calvary by your desertion the faith?".

Read Less Show Less One of her colleagues was Anthony Nutting, who, in 1956, resigned from Eden's government because of his opposition to the Suez operation. … Read More For a time Lady Avon lived in a roof-top room at the Dorchester Hotel, which she obtained at a cut-price rate because of its vulnerability to bombing (although the building was a modern, steel-framed structure with extensive underground accommodation that was considered relatively safe during air raids).<br /><br /> After the war Lady Avon worked at London Films for the producer Sir Alexander Korda, who she thought made "terrible mistakes without really knowing what has happened", and as a reviewer for the fashion magazine Vogue. She met 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), on a "rather wild trip" to Brussels.

During the latter excursion Goddard expressed a wish to attend a pornographic show, but, although Korda's representatives made arrangements for this, she shied away when she and Lady Avon, having climbed "a flight of shabby stairs", were greeted by two men in black suits. Read Less … As hostess at 10 Downing Street, Lady Avon 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". Because the Edens' tenure was so short, Lady Avon's plans to return the fabric and furniture of the house to the styles of the 1730s, when it was built, were never realised. <br /><br />Lady Avon 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 trees. However, her successor, Lady Dorothy Macmillan, so keen a horticulturalist that she sometimes gardened at night, removed yellow and white flowers planted by Lady Avon and replaced them with roses of "normal colour".

One episode at Chequers attracted considerable publicity. Read Less In January 1956 Lady Avon politely requested the occupant of a farm worker's cottage on the estate to hang her washing where it could not be seen by visitors. … Read More Although it seems that the washing may have been hung across a lime walk, beyond the boundary of the cottage garden itself, the story was taken up by the Daily Mirror as an alleged example of Lady Avon's high-handedness. Coming shortly after attacks in the press on Eden's leadership, the timing was unfortunate. Read Less In April 1956 Lady Avon hosted a dinner at Chequers for the visiting Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin. … Read More Khrushchev noted that Lady Avon's (sober) behaviour contradicted briefing from the Soviet Embassy in London that she shared some of Winston Churchill's "traits in the matter of drinking". Over dinner (when, according to his hostess, he ate nothing despite his reputation for eating and drinking greedily), 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".

The following morning Khrushchev mistook Lady Avon'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". Read Less As the Suez Crisis reached its climax in 1956, the Labour Party opposed Anglo-French attacks on Egypt. … Read More On 1 November Lady Avon found herself sitting next to Dora Gaitskell, wife of the Labour leader, in the gallery of the 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 Mrs Gaitskell replied, "the boys must have their fun". (An alternative version is that Mrs Gaitskell responded, "What I can't stand is the mounted police charging the crowds outside".) Three days later Lady Avon attended, out of curiosity, an anti-Government "Law not War" demonstration in Trafalgar Square, but thought it politic to withdraw when she was recognised with friendly cheers.

Read Less In the humiliating aftermath of Suez in 1956, Lady Avon's most famous public remark to a group of Conservative woman that, "in the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing room", was widely reported. … Read More Lady Avon has since described this observation as "silly, really idiotic", though it remains probably the most quoted utterance of the whole crisis. 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". Another, in the following year, was when the Times newspaper cited Lady Avon's remark in connection with a call by the outgoing Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell for Prime Ministerial spouses to receive greater support from public funds: "In a constitutional monarchy, the consort of the prime minister is not an official role...

Yet, as the Countess of Avon so vividly pointed out, it can be impossible to keep public scrunity at bay altogther". In Lady 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." Read Less During this period there were some who thought they detected undue influence by Lady Avon over her husband. For example, Lady Jebb, wife of the British Ambassador in Paris, alluded in her diary to Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth and referred to "Clarissa's war". (It should be borne in mind, however, that her husband, Sir Gladwyn, a "figure of some grandeur, if not hauteur", was furious at his exclusion from an Anglo-French summit in Paris two weeks before the Suez invasion.) In December 1956 Walter Monckton, a member of Eden's Government who opposed the Suez invasion, apparently told a Labour Member of Parliament, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, that Lady Avon 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".

… Read More 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 in relation to the railwaymen than that advised by Monckton, as Minister of Labour, and senior civil servants (although there is evidence that Churchill had also privately advocated to Eden the need for a strong line).<br /><br /> In private correspondence just after Suez, the Oxford historian Hugh Trevor-Roper derided Lady Avon'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 herself would listen only to Cecil Beaton, whom he described (with reference to the Svengali of the last Russian Czarina Alexandra) as her "Rasputin".<br /><br /> Less dramatically, there were suggestions that Edenâs touchiness and over-sensitivity to criticism, characteristics frequently remarked upon by colleagues, were exacerbated by Lady Avon (described by historian Barry Turner, without explanation, as "equally touchy").

One of Eden's private secretaries claimed that "she had a habit of stirring up Anthony when he didn't need it". However, Eden's biographer D. R. Thorpe concluded that such imputations arose from a misreading of the Edens' relationship, noting also that, during Suez, the only two people in whom Eden could confide without inhibition were his wife and the Queen. Similarly, David Dutton, a biographer generally less sympathetic to Eden than Thorpe, while noting that "some observers believed that Clarissa was excessively protective and tended to exacerbate Eden's natural volatility", nevertheless remarked on her devoted companionship and that "during the dark days of the Suez Crisis, she was at his side, supportive throughout". Read Less The Edens returned to England just before Christmas 1956 - "Everyone looking at us with thoughtful eyes", noted Lady Avon - and Sir Anthony resigned as Prime Minister on 9 January 1957. … Read More When Harold Macmillan was appointed as his successor in preference to R. A.

Butler, Lady Avon wrote to Butler (whom two years earlier she had described in her diary as "curiously unnatural") that she thought politics "a beastly profession... and how greatly I admire your dignity and good humour". (In 1952 she had told Duff Cooper that she thought modern politics something of a "farce".) <br /><br /> Macmillan's biographer Alistair Horne noted that, of the various animosities that arose before and during Macmilan's premiership, it was the "loyal wives", among whom he counted Lady Avon and Lady Butler, who "tended most to keep them alive". Although there is evidence of a long-standing and lasting rift between Eden and Macmillan, Eden himself maintained "a friendly (if not conspicuously warm) relationship" with his successor, often being used as a "sounding board" by Macmillan who occasionally lunched with the Edens at their home. Lady Avon, on the other hand, was said to have been consistently vitriolic about Macmillan and recalled to one of Eden's biographers that Churchill had found Macmillan too "viewy".

Read Less Lady Avon maintained many of her wider acquaintances. For example, Cecil Beaton and Greta Garbo visited 10 Downing Street at her invitation in October 1956. … Read More They drank vodka and ice and Beaton recorded Lady Avon's observation that her husband was kept awake by the sound of motor scooters, which were growing in popularity among young people in the 1950s. Lady Avon 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, who had a cigarette holder between her teeth, that he had always wanted to meet her. Read Less FIFTIES 1972 52 Years Old Over the years Lady Avon attended various state occasions, as well as gatherings of former Prime Ministers and their families.

For example, 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, while thirty years later Tony Blair's press secretary Alastair Campbell noted that, at a dinner at 10 Downing Street in 2002 to mark Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee, attended by five Prime Ministers and several relatives of deceased Prime Ministers: Prince Philip was deep in conversation with Tony Blair, the Countess of Avon, Macmillan's and Douglas-Home's families, and there was lots of reminiscing about life in Number 10. 1976 56 Years Old … Shortly after Eden's resignation, he and Lady Avon sailed to New Zealand for a further break. Their cabin steward, on what she described as "the hellship Rangitata", was the future Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

Half a century later Prescott recalled that, while kneeling down 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" - whereupon Sir Anthony tapped him on the head. 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. <br /><br />Eden had been told by doctors that his life might be in danger if he remained in office. In the event he was to live for another twenty years. The Edens' home was at Alvediston, Wiltshire, where he died on 14 January 1977 and is buried. Read Less The last entry in Eden's diary, dated 11 September 1976, had read; "exquisite small vase of crimson glory buds & mignonette from beloved Clarissa".

… Read More 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 Averell Harriman, elder statesman of the Democratic Party, and his English-born wife Pamela. (Mrs Harriman was Lady Avon's exact contemporary, a dÃ©butante of 1938 who had also taken a room at the Dorchester during the Second World War. She had previously been married to Lady Avon's cousin Randolph Churchill and in the 1990s was President Bill Clinton's Ambassador to Paris, where she died in 1997.) The Edens were flown back to Britain in a Royal Air Force VC-10 that was diverted to Miami after Prime Minister James Callaghan had been alerted to the situation by Pamela Harriman's son, Winston.<br /><br /> After her husband's death, Lady Avon received many tributes to 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.

Published in 1986 and 2003 respectively, both offered a broadly sympathic view of Edenâs career and were generally well received by critics. Between them they did much to help restore Edenâ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 USA with an acknowledgement of Lady Avon's interest and cooperation. Read Less 1977 57 Years Old The Edens' marriage, which lasted until his death on 14 January 1977, was, by all accounts, an extremely happy one, though Lady Avon miscarried in 1954 and there were no children.

… Read More Her stepson, Nicholas, Eden's surviving son from his first marriage, who succeeded him as 2nd Earl of Avon, was a Minister in Margaret Thatcher's Government in the 1980s, but died of AIDS in 1985.<br /><br /> Churchill had told Lady Avon, following her honeymoon in 1952, that he wanted to give up the premiership. However, it was not until 6 April 1955 that Eden succeeded him as Prime Minister, shortly afterward winning a general election in which his Conservative Party polled the largest percentage of the popular vote recorded by a party between 1945 and the present day. Colville noted that, at a dinner, attended by the Queen, to mark Churchillâs retirement, the Duchess of Westminster had put her foot through Lady Avonâs train, causing the monarch's consort, The Duke of Edinburgh, to remark, "that's torn it, in more than one sense".

Read Less LATE ADULTHOOD 1986 - 2005 4 More Events 1986 66 Years Old Having lost both parents by her mid twenties, Lady Avon was comparatively independent for a young woman of her time. In later years she apparently remarked to Wyatt on "how much more restricted girls were when she was young", while conceding that she herself had had her first affair at seventeen with a "man who was quite well-known and â¦ still alive 1986". … Read More She had many devoted admirers, an early "ardent suitor" being Sir Colville Barclay, briefly a diplomat and later a painter, who was stepson of Lord Vansittart, former permanent head of the Foreign Office.<br /><br /> Lady Avon was quoted by Wyatt as having told him that she resisted the amorous advances of Duff Cooper, wartime Information Minister and British Ambassador in Paris 1944-7, who, thirty years her senior, had also been a friend of her mother: "I was the only woman who he never got more than a peck on the cheek from".

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". When Cooper was raised to the peerage (as Viscount Norwich), he sought Lady Avon's views as to a title - "Think, child, think... Have you any suggestions? (not funny ones)" - 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. Read Less 1994 74 Years Old In 1994, 17 years after her husband's death, Lady Avon unveiled a bust of Eden at the Foreign Office. … Read More Lady Avon was the youngest wife of an incumbent Prime Minister in the twentieth century. She was only 36 when her husband resigned and widowed at 56. By contrast, Lady Dorothy Macmillan was 57 when her husband succeeded Eden and 63 when he resigned.

Read Less 1997 77 Years Old … The husbands of Dame Norma Major, Cherie Blair and Sarah Brown became Prime Minister 35, 42 and 52 years respectively after Eden had done so; in 2010, Samantha Cameron's husband David Cameron succeeded Brown seven weeks before Lady Avon's ninetieth birthday, 55 years after Eden had assumed office and 53 years and 4 months after his resignation. Norma Major (whose husband became Prime Minister in 1990) was the first of Lady Avon's successors to have been born after her. Read Less Until William Hague married 29-year old Ffion Jenkins in 1997, Lady Avon had been the youngest spouse of a leader of the modern Conservative Party. … Read More Like Lady Avon, Samantha Cameron was 34 when her husband became leader of the party in 2005.<br /><br /> Lady Avon was played by Jennifer Daniel in Ian Curteis' 1979 drama for BBC television, Suez 1956.

Read Less 2005 85 Years Old As such Lady Avon has enjoyed unusual longevity for a Prime Ministerial spouse, contributing, for example, to a television documentary by Cherie Blair in 2005 about Prime Ministersâ wives and to a three-part series the following year marking the fiftieth anniversary of Suez. … Read More In the latter, she recalled, among other things, Eden's disillusion with the lack of American support for British policy in 1956. The critic A A Gill was among those who praised Lady Avon's erudite performance in the Blair documentary ("bright as a button"), while sensing that she appeared not entirely to approve of Mrs Blair. Read Less Clarissa Eden: A witness to history - Telegraph Clarissa Eden: A witness to history Clarissa Eden was accused of influencing her husband during the Suez Crisis 12:01AM BST 21 Oct 2007 She was Winston Churchill's niece, Anthony Eden's wife, and her friends included Isaiah Berlin, Evelyn Waugh and Greta Garbo.

As she publishes her memoirs at the age of 87, the extraordinary Clarissa Eden talks to Nigel Farndale Sitting in an upright chair in her large, high-ceilinged drawing room in west London, Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon, seems slight and wan, as if painted in watercolour rather than oil. It's a trick of the light, perhaps - no electric lamps are on and, as the morning is overcast, the light that streams in through the sash windows is soft and grainy. In conversation she seems vigorous and knowing. And she is only 87. As the widow of Sir Anthony Eden, who was prime minister during the Suez Crisis, you imagine she must be older. She moves a baton to find space for a coffee pot. "This? It's made of sandalwood. Nehru gave it to me. I had been admiring it and he said 'I want you to have it'." Such was the extraordinary circle she moved in.

Related Articles Exclusive extracts from the memoirs of Clarissa Eden 19 Oct 2007 She was born into the aristocracy: her uncle was Winston Churchill, her mentor when she studied philosophy at Oxford was Sir Isaiah Berlin and when she did her season, she danced with Donald Maclean, the spy. She counted Evelyn Waugh, Cyril Connolly, Lucian Freud, Cecil Beaton, Greta Garbo, Ian Fleming, Nancy Mitford and Orson Welles among her friends. Before she married, indeed, her life was all about culture and the arts. Afterwards it became all about politics. "My life," she says, "divided into two parts." That is how her memoirs, published this week, are structured. She had requested that her diaries remained unpublished until 10 years after her death; why the change of heart? "I didn't want to write it, as I don't like parading myself, but when I met Cate I thought perhaps I can do it now." She refers to Cate Haste, the wife of Melvyn Bragg, who has edited the book and written introductions to the various phases in Lady Avon's life.

Previously, she was the co-author, with Cherie Blair, of The Goldfish Bowl. She is sitting alongside us now. "Clarissa needed a lot of persuading to write this book," Haste says. But it proved easy once she started, in part because, as Lady Avon points out, her generation corresponded more than people do today. "One would even write to friends one was seeing almost every day," she says. "Everyone was very nice in sending my letters back to me for this book. I didn't keep all mine. I remember throwing some of Isaiah's into the wastepaper basket." When I note that there is a Mitford feel to her writing, she says, "Oh dear". I mean the irony and the dry humour. "I don't have the argot they did. Nancy became my friend, although I saw more of Debo." Did she, like the Mitford sisters, feel cheated of a formal university education? "From the age of 16 I did feel very much cheated, mainly because I wasn't well taught. I didn't take the school certificate because I was so bored. None of my female contemporaries got to university at all.

Not one." Although she didn't take a degree, she studied at Oxford in the 1930s and was, according to Antonia Fraser, "the dons' delight, because she was beautiful and extremely intellectual". She was quite the bohemian, too, wearing suits in the style of Marlene Dietrich. But the impending war meant there was an air of menace, as well as frivolity. "I knew for certain that there would be a war, because of my uncle. He had been prognosticating throughout the Thirties. I knew because he knew, so to speak. The people who didn't want to know believed in Chamberlain." She was living in London during the war, decoding ciphers in the Foreign Office. "I was in the bowels of the building, so I never met Anthony [then foreign secretary], who was upstairs. It sounds awful to say it, but the war was exciting. The bombing was going on all round. One was young and didn't think about it. I lived on the top floor of the Dorchester and went on the roof to watch the fireworks.

At that age you don't imagine that anything is going to happen to you." She seems to have had many suitors at the time. "I don't know, I don't know. Cate seems to think so." "It's true," says Cate Haste. "Men fell in love with you quite a lot. That was my impression from reading the correspondence." Both Duff Cooper, the wartime information minister, and Evelyn Waugh protested their love for her in their letters. Did she not realise this at the time? "It didn't make a great impression on me, which is rather awful. Sounds rather conceited, but it didn't somehow." When her engagement to Anthony Eden was announced in 1952 her friends were shocked. "They almost didn't take it seriously. It seemed an extraordinary thing to happen." Extraordinary in what way? "I wasn't of that world." He was 23 years older; did that age difference bother her? "No, it was more that none of my friends were his friends, we lived in different worlds, socially." Evelyn Waugh cautioned against the marriage. "He opposed it, assuming it couldn't happen on religious grounds because Anthony was a divorcee.

It came as a shock to him to him when I told him. Our friendship never recovered. Bang! That was it. Other Catholic friends were more civilised about it." Soon after she married, she found herself in the extraordinary position of having to take sides between her uncle Winston, who was dragging out his resignation as prime minister, and her husband, who was the heir apparent. "My sympathies had to be with my husband. Anthony didn't push when it was time for Winston to go. It is never easy to go, as Tony Blair showed." History doesn't always repeat itself, though. Shortly after becoming prime minister in 1955, Eden called a snap election and won. "Yes, it paid off for my husband. He increased the majority. "I'm sure he was right to call that election when he did. It is all about timing. He felt the need to have a mandate on his own terms, rather than inheriting one. I would have thought that a good idea, but then I don't know much about Gordon Brown." Mr Brown thought a snap election was a good idea until the polls changed. "Hmm, yes.

I don't think we were persecuted by the polls in quite the same way in those days." But she - they - were persecuted by the media. "You mean during the Suez Crisis? Yes. Absolutely. Anthony was no good at spin. It didn't occur to him." I ask how she imagines her husband would fare in today's political climate, given that some consider the Eton-educated David Cameron too posh for purpose. "I suppose that applied to my husband even more. He seemed pretty posh at the time, but as he had just come out of the war he genuinely liked talking to the man in the street." I suggest that people thought it appropriate to be ruled by their social superiors then. "I don't think it was that. They liked him because they knew he liked them. That was the reason." Clarissa Eden was haunted by an unguarded comment she made during Suez. "In the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing-room." It became one of the most quoted comments on the Crisis, cited as proof that the Edens were divorced from reality. "Both Anthony and I were quite naive about how the press works.

Neither of us should have been, but we were." Nevertheless, an impression built up that Eden was unduly influenced by his wife; that he consulted her politically during Suez. Indeed, in her diary, Lady Jebb, the wife of the British ambassador to Paris, alluded to "Clarissa's war". I ask if there was any truth in that perception. "Oh no, he wouldn't have done that. I might have given him gossip but that was all." But she was politically astute, I note. She knew exactly what was going on during the Suez Crisis. "Only because he told me." So he would share his innermost thoughts? "He would tell me what was happening in Cabinet, but I don't think I ever gave him advice. I wanted to be supportive. I didn't egg him on." Any advice for Samantha Cameron? "So much depends on the husband in terms of how the wife copes with it all. She appears to have much stronger views than I ever had. She has a career, after all. My only advice to Sarah Brown and Samantha Cameron would be to keep a diary. Mine was frivolous. About people.

What they said and how they behaved." Her husband's reputation was permanently tarnished by Suez. Her anger about that is palpable. "They were a whole bunch of prima donnas." The Americans behaved shabbily? "Quite. Eisenhower later regretted his stance." She also blames Harold Macmillan, then foreign secretary, first for giving her husband the impression that the Americans would not intervene, then for buckling too soon when the Americans brought economic pressure to bear. "Macmillan was too hasty. He used the American threat to withhold the IMF loan as an excuse to back down." When Eden resigned in January 1957, officially due to ill health, Macmillan "wept crocodile tears", according to Lady Avon. Did the Suez experience leave her husband bitter? "If he was bitter he never showed it to me. Not bitter, no. That wasn't in his nature. He was just very sad about it." Does she imagine Blair now thinks of Iraq as his Suez? "I shouldn't think so, do you?

I don't know much about Mr Blair's psychology but I doubt he thinks in any way that he has been defeated." Nevertheless: "I suppose Mr Blair will be judged on Iraq, as Anthony was judged on Suez." There is a steeliness below Lady Avon's polite and self-deprecating surface. She talks in a precise and measured way, rarely elaborating. Her prose style is like that, too. When it is time for her photograph to be taken, her instructions are unambiguous: "Don't ask me to smile. I'm sick of smiling in photographs. I want to look glum." 'Clarissa Eden - A Memoir', by Clarissa Eden and Cate Haste, will be published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson on Thursday, £25 Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 931 2921 or email syndication@telegraph.co.uk

Question: Clarissa Churchill was the second wife of which British Prime Minister?
Answer: ANTHONY EDEN