Eden’s rock during the Suez Crisis
Countess of Avon Widow of Conservative Prime Minister Anthony Eden BORN JUNE 28, 1920 – DIED NOVEMBER 15, 2021, AGED 101
REVERED in high society for her intelligence and knowledge of the arts, Winston Churchill’s niece Clarissa supported her husband Anthony Eden as he negotiated the Suez Crisis. Addressing a crowd in Gateshead in November 1956, while her husband was Prime Minister, she famously said: “In the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing room.”
Eden, already in poor health because of a botched gallbladder operation, was burnt out by the crisis and, after just two years in the job, stood down to make way for the ambitious Harold Macmillan.
Despite only a few years in Downing Street, Clarissa Eden made a huge impression as she improved the decor and catering and brought a wide circle of people into the political domain.
She was born Anne Clarissa Churchill (but only used her second name), the only child of Sir Winston’s younger brother, Major John Strange Churchill, and his wife Lady Gwendoline Bertie.
After leaving boarding school at 16, she moved to Paris to study the arts but later studied philosophy at Oxford. Cecil Beaton became a close friend and she was said to be the inspiration for the character Perdita in James Pope-Hennessy’s book London Fabric. Clarissa and the author visited architectural sites and had lively discussions about the quality of the buildings.
During the Second World War she stayed at Chequers with her uncle and worked on an English language propaganda newspaper published in Russia.
At the end of the war Vogue employed her to work on its Spotlight column and she also found time to publicise films directed by Alexander Korda, including Anna Karenina.
Anthony Eden pursued her when he was Foreign Secretary after his first wife, Beatrice Beckett, with whom he had two sons, left him for US General CD Jackson. Eden’s eldest son died serving with the RAF at the end of the Second World War.
They married in a civil ceremony at London’s Caxton Hall in August 1952. She was devoted to her husband until his death at their home in Wiltshire in January 1977.
Eden had accepted a peerage as Earl of Avon in 1961. The widowed Countess of Avon moved to a flat in London and took up many new pursuits, including deep sea diving.
She had a wide circle of friends, including Barry Humphries and Lucian Freud, and enjoyed going to the opera with Lord Goodman.