History: I must declare at the outset an interest in the subject of this book. In November 1956, as the only protest open to me about the invasion of Suez, I switched from the Daily Telegraph to what was then the Manchester Guardian. In those days there were no street demonstrations. So I cannot claim to have approached this biography of Anthony Eden, later Lord Avon, with a completely open mind! Garret FitzGerald reviews Eden by D.M. Thomas.
This is a sympathetic biography of Eden, but it is not hagiographic. Many criticisms of Eden, both by contemporaries and by subsequent writers, are recorded. Nevertheless, at several points, including in his account of the Suez crisis, the author seems to me to let Eden down lightly.
My own interest in foreign affairs was initially sparked off in October 1934 by the shooting of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and the French Foreign Minister, Louis Barthou, in Marseilles - although my eight-year-old motivation in deciding thereafter to keep up with world affairs was notably politically incorrect. The fact is that I had been humiliated at school next day when it emerged that some of the girls in my class knew all about it and I failed to hide my ignorance of this dramatic event. I vowed never again to fail to keep up with international news!
I thus read with particular interest that Eden - then minister of state at the Foreign Office - later referred to these shots as "the first of the second World War" - and also that his personal diplomacy was widely credited with having prevented war between Yugoslavia and Hungary from breaking out over this assassination.
This book contains some fascinating vignettes of the British governing class in the 1930s. The foreign secretary's scarlet and gold despatch boxes were brought into him by frock-coated servants. "Banquets of legendary splendour" were served on official occasions - although the foreign secretary had to pay for day-to-day entertaining himself, and there was no official car.
In the Foreign Office, pin-stripe trousers were then de rigueur, but on appointment as lord privy seal in 1934 Eden was reassured by the king's private secretary that "things were much more informal nowadays", so he would not need knee-breeches or buckled shoes when dining with the Royal Family at Sandringham - white tie and tails would be quite acceptable!
King George V emerges as a man with very decided views. During that visit by Eden he launched into a tirade against Labour front-bencher Stafford Cripps, who had had the temerity to say that the next Labour government would have to overcome opposition from Buckingham Palace (court circles and officials and other people who surrounded the king): "What does he mean by saying that Buckingham Palace is not me? Who else is there, I should like to know? . . . He says that if Labour get back with a clear majority (which please God it never will) then a Trade Union Congress is going to tell me who is going to be prime minister. I'll see them damned first. That is my business and I'll send for whom I like."
And when, following British repudiation of the Hoare/Laval Pact, which in December 1935 had proposed to make concessions to Mussolini over Abyssinia, Sir Samuel Hoare had to resign as foreign secretary, the king told his successor, Eden, that he had made it clear to Hoare at his resignation audience that he disapproved of the pact, and had joked with him: "You know what they're all saying: 'No more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris,' adding 'the fellow didn't even laugh'!"
Eden had little time for George V's successor, Edward VIII, whose carelessness in leaving secret papers around where they became "stained by his guests' cocktail glasses" led to the papers sent to him being restricted.
In February 1938 Eden resigned from the cabinet over a proposal for talks with Italy, the way for which had apparently been prepared by secret talks held by Chamberlain's sister-in-law, Ivy, in Rome, behind Eden's back. Eden thus became something of a hero to those opposed to appeasement.
But in retrospect, in contrast to Winston Churchill, he appears to have been too concerned about his bête noire, Mussolini, to have appreciated in the mid-1930s the greater threat from Hitler, by whom he had in fact been quite impressed the first time they met.
On his second visit to Hitler, in early 1935, he was more worried about Hitler's stance. "Results bad," he noted, "rearmed and rearming with the old Prussian spirit very much in evidence" - but he nevertheless enjoyed reminiscing with Hitler over dinner about their experiences; they had been opposite each other on the Western Front in March 1918.
On the eve of Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland in February 1936 Eden was actually proposing to the cabinet an air pact with Germany, and it was Britain's failure to react to this flagrant violation of the Versailles Treaty that inhibited the French from moving against Germany at a time when such action might conceivably have stopped Germany in its tracks. Later Eden judged that his failure to confront this crisis had been the biggest mistake of his career.
Eden returned to office in September 1939, first as dominions secretary, dealing with what the author of this book oddly describes as "the self-governing countries" of the Commonwealth, including Ireland - all of which had of course been sovereign independent states at least since 1931. Later he refers to them even more curiously, and offensively, as "the protectorates"!
Thenceforward Eden was, of course, seen as the almost certain successor to Churchill, but because of what the author described as Churchill's "limpet-like qualities", Eden's was a very long and frustrating apprenticeship, lasting fully 15 years. Their relationship was generally quite good but sometimes stormy. After one row by telephone in 1954 Churchill exploded, describing Eden as "the most selfish man he had ever known, thought only of himself . . . a prima donna, and quite impossible to work with".
When Eden eventually succeeded in April 1955, after a first serious bout of illness, the author says he had begun to wonder if the game was worth the candle; he had lost much of his appetite for the challenge. Harold Macmillan - whom Eden disliked, feeling him to be not a gentleman but a showman - later remarked that "the trouble with Anthony Eden was that he was trained to win the Derby in 1938; unfortunately he was not let out of the stalls until 1955".
For me, at least, Thorpe's account of the Suez crisis is somewhat unsatisfactory. He does not seem to add much to what is known already. Moreover, his attitude to Eden's collusion with Israel is complaisant. There is an obvious logical gap in his rhetorical question: "How exactly Eden had been expected to proceed without undertaking confidential negotiations is not clear, yet 'collusion' . . . has become one of the main charges against Eden." Nor can I accept his view that "Eden was more colluded against, than colluding".
Away back in 1937 his assistant private secretary, Harold Caccia, had written privately about Eden as a "traditional English gentleman" and an "attractive character with his natural and unaffected kindness and generosity of character, with his quickness and brightness, with his sense for art and his knowledge of it . . . surely this is a superior man - a thoroughbred". But, presciently, he had gone on to add: "And yet admitting and admiring his qualities I cannot help the suspicion that some essential things are lacking: greatness, firmness, fixity of purpose, the quiet confidence that in these perilous years 'I know I can save England and no-one else can'. These things may come with time."
But I don't think they did.
At a time when another British prime minister has launched a new war in yet another Arab country - this time in support of the United States, which 47 years ago blocked Eden's Egyptian adventure - the story of Anthony Eden has a particular resonance, especially, perhaps, for those of us who can remember the Suez debacle.
Garret FitzGerald is a former taoiseach. His latest book, Reflections on the Irish State, was published by Irish Academic Press
Eden. By D.M. Thorne, Chatto & Windus, 607pp. £25