Eden, Anthony, 1st earl of Avon
[key], 1897–1977, British statesman. After service in World War I
he attended Oxford and entered (1923) Parliament as a Conservative. He soon
made his mark as a champion of peace, internationalism, and the League of
Nations and was made lord privy seal (1934–35) and “traveling
ambassador.” He served (1935) as British minister for League affairs
and became foreign minister in 1935. He resigned in Feb., 1938, because of
his opposition to Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement of the Axis
powers, but at the beginning (1939) of World War II he was called back to
the cabinet as secretary of state for dominion affairs. After Winston
Churchill became (May, 1940) prime minister, Eden was briefly secretary of
war before returning to the foreign office in Dec., 1940. He was
instrumental in concluding the wartime Anglo-Soviet Alliance and in
establishing the United Nations. He remained in Parliament under the Labour
government of 1945–51, and with the Conservative victory of 1951 he
returned once more to the foreign office. As chairman of the 1954 Geneva
Conference, he helped to negotiate a temporary settlement of the conflict in
Indochina. He was knighted in 1954 and became prime minister upon
Churchill's resignation in 1955. Eden's decision to use armed intervention
in the Suez Canal crisis
of 1956 provoked great controversy. His health collapsed, and he resigned in
Jan., 1957. He was raised to the peerage as earl of Avon in 1961. Eden's
second wife, Anne Clarissa Spencer-Churchill (1920-2021) was
the niece of Sir Winston Churchill.
See his three volumes of memoirs, Full Circle (1960), Facing the Dictators, 1923–1938 (1962), and The Reckoning (1965); study by G. McDermott (1969); biographies by R. R. James (1986) and D. Carlton (1981).
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