Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon

Anthony Eden (b 1897) was a British politician in the mid twentieth century.

Eden was born in West Auckland, County Durham, into a very conservative landowner family. His mother, Sybil Grey, was a member of the famous Grey family of Northumberland. He studied at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in oriental languages. (He was fluent in French, German and Persian. He also spoke Russian and Arabic). Following a military career during World War I, during which he received a Military Cross, Eden entered politics in 1923 when he was elected Member of Parliament for Warwick and Leamington, as a Conservative. In that year also he married Beatrice Beckett. They had two sons, but the marriage was not a success and broke up under the strain of Eden's political career.

Eden became Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Foreign Office in 1926. In 1931 he was promoted to Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In 1934 he was appointed Lord Privy Seal and Minister for the League of Nations in Stanley Baldwin's Government. Like many of his generation who had served in the First World War, Eden was strongly anti-war and strove to work through the League of Nations to preserve European peace. He was however among the first to recognise that peace could not be maintained by appeasement of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. He privately opposed the policy of the Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, of trying to appease Italy during its invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935. When Hoare resigned after the failure of the Hoare-Laval Pact, Eden succeeded him as Foreign Secretary.

At this stage in his career Eden was considered as something of a leader of fashion. He regularly wore a Homburg hat (similar to a bowler hat but with an upturned brim), which became forever known in Britain by his name.

He had an elder brother called Timothy and a younger brother, Nicholas, who had been killed when the HMS Indefatigable had been sunk at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

Eden became Foreign Secretary at a time when Britain was having to adjust its foreign policy to face the rise of the fascist powers. He supported the policy of non-interference in the Spanish Civil War, and supported Neville Chamberlain in his efforts to preserve peace through reasonable concessions to Germany. He did not protest when Britain and France failed to oppose Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936. But in February 1938, he resigned because he could not accept Chamberlain's opening of negotiations with Italy. This made him an ally of Winston Churchill, then a rebel backbench Conservative Party MP and leading critic of appeasement. There was much speculation that Eden would become a rallying point for all the disparate opponents of Chamberlain, but instead he maintained a low profile, avoiding confrontation though he opposed the Munich Agreement. As a result Eden's position declined heavily amongst politicians, though he remained popular in the country at large.

In September 1939, on the outbreak of war, Eden returned to Chamberlain's government as Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, but was not in the War CabinetAs a result he was not considered a candidate for the Premiership when Chamberlain resigned after Germany invaded France in May 1940 and Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. Churchill appointed Eden Secretary of State for War. Later in 1940 he returned to the Foreign Office, and in this role became a member of the executive committee of the Political Warfare Executive in 1941.

After the Race's Conquest Fleet invaded Earth in 1942, Eden did not represent Britain at Big Five strategy conferences, as these were hosted in London and Churchill himself was available to speak for Britain. However, Eden did travel extensively during the war, mainly to the United States and Germany, and he represented Britain when Atvar convened a meeting of representatives of leading human governments in Cairo in 1945 to discuss peace terms.

At Cairo, Eden obtained guarantees that the Race would respect British sovereignty, but would not have full diplomatic relations with the Race until it developed an atomic bomb. Eden was also forced to give up Britain's territorial claims to its imperial colonies except for Northern Ireland.

Eden succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister and was head of Britain's Government when the Colonization Fleet arrived in 1962. As Prime Minister, he cultivated a closer relationship with Germany and made life difficult for Jews. However, he kept Britain out of the war between Germany and the Race that began when German Chancellor Ernst Kaltenbrunner invaded Poland in 1965.