Bad Timing

R.W. Johnson

• Eden: The Life and Times of Anthony Eden, First Earl of Avon 1897-1977 by D.R. Thorpe
  Chatto, 758 pp, £25.00, March 2003, ISBN 0 7011 6744 0
• The Macmillan Diaries: The Cabinet Years 1950-57 edited by Peter Catterall
  Macmillan, 676 pp, £25.00, April 2003, ISBN 0 333 71167 X

Harold Macmillan’s judgment on Anthony Eden, that ‘he was trained to win the Derby in 1938; unfortunately, he was not let out of the starting stalls until 1955,’ was echoed by Anthony Nutting: ‘he had for too long been the Golden Boy of the Tory Party, the glamorous Crown Prince awaiting the summons to mount the throne in place of the ageing Emperor.’ Indeed, a survey of historians shows that Eden’s short premiership was enough to earn him the title of ‘worst prime minister of the 20th century’. One of the merits of D.R. Thorpe’s new biography is that it enables one to sympathise with Eden’s own verdict (after Horace Walpole): ‘Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.’ Eden was a man only too able to feel, trying hard to be someone who only thinks.