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Clarissa Eden

Clarissa Eden: A Memoir Hardcover – October 25, 2007

by Clarissa Eden (Author), Cate Haste (Editor)

4.1 33 ratings

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In 1955, at the astonishingly young age of 34, Clarissa Eden entered No. 10 Downing Street as the wife of the new Prime Minister, Anthony Eden. Born Clarissa Churchill in 1920, her uncle was the great Winston, and when she married the 55-year-old Eden, then Foreign Secretary, at Caxton Hall register office in 1952, there were crowds as big as the gathering that had cheered Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding's wedding there six months earlier. A renowned beauty, she was at home with her mother's Liberal intellectual circle, and mixed in her youth with the pillars of Oxford's academic community, Isaiah Berlin, Maurice Bowra, and David Cecil among them. According to Antonia Fraser, she was the don's delight because she was beautiful and extremely intellectual.” Her close circle of friends included some of the leading cultural figures of the twentieth century, including Cecil Beaton, Evelyn Waugh, and Orson Welles. Her observations and insights into these men and their world provide a unique window into the mid 20th century. As the spouse of the most important man in Britain, the hostess at No. 10 and Chequers, Clarissa Eden was inevitably privy to a multitude of top-level secrets. The Suez crisis and Eden's ill health meant that she shared just four years of Anthony's political life and eighteen months as Prime Minister's wife. This individual, discriminating and honest memoir is her first account of extraordinary times.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Orion Publishing
Publication date

October 25, 2007
Dimensions

6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0297851934
ISBN-13

978-0297851936
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Editorial Reviews

Review

'As a piece of social history it is a delight, but it is more than that... brought together with charm and clarity, creating a picture of a world now gone that sometimes appals but mostly enchants.' -- Norma Major, MAIL ON SUNDAY

'Clarissa has a ready wit and a deliciously dry sense of humour.' -- Virginia Rounding, DAILY MAIL

'Her character bounds off every page - wry, steely, inscrutable' -- Ed Smith, THE TIMES

'Her writing is understated, carrying the light, ironic inflections of her class and period... She sits next to the great and quietly skewers them' -- THE ECONOMIST

'The book's importance lies in its myriad insights into the personalities of many of the most important artistic, social, literary, political and cultural figures of the mid-20th century... significant work of social and cultural history' -- Andrew Roberts, THE SCOTSMAN

'a riveting account of London in the 1940s and 1950s - intelligent, wry and sharp. Her memoirs will become an important historical document...' -- Jane Ridley, LITERARY REVIEW

'a tantalising memoir, with sharp observations and anecdotes, seldom cutting and never downright rude... one is left wishing for more...' -- Ivan Fallon, THE INDEPENDENT

'more like a character from a novel than a real person... she might have been invented by Evelyn Waugh...' -- Dominic Sandbrook, DAILY TELEGRAPH

'the point of this book is its personal portrait of an extraordinary woman, fiercely independent since childhood... makes for lively reading.' -- Raymond Carr, THE SPECTATOR

About the Author

Cate Haste is a writer and freelance documentary film-maker.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orion Publishing; First Edition (October 25, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0297851934
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0297851936
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.61 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,648,676 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15,801 in Political Leader Biographies
- #99,442 in Memoirs (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.1 33 ratings

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4.1 out of 5

33 global ratings

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Absinthe

Her own voice with much to say

Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2013

It would be easy to disparage Clarissa Churchill Eden, as some reviewers already have. She was a great beauty -- and perhaps still is, based upon the later pictures -- well-connected with Anglo-Franco-American high society. She was an intelligent but passive observer of her times. Part I of the book shows her as a young woman of aristocratic background making her privileged way through artistic-Bohemian London during the late '30s and, gamely, through WW II. Part II of the book concerns her marriage to Anthony Eden, PM for less than 2 years. This account will be of interest to students of the '50s, especially those who remember the Suez Crisis, which quashed British influence in the Middle East. Her account of Suez (in part attributed to private communications) explains in a human way why the British often harbor anti-American and anti-Israeli resentments. Enjoyable, even compulsive, reading for those of us with an interest in the period.

4 people found this helpful

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Rainbow Bear

A product of her time

Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2009

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Disappointing, but not surprising, this memoir reflects the sensibility and upbringing of its author.
Although not looking for 'sensational', a little 'revealing' and 'insightful' would have been good.
As the niece of Winston Churchill and the wife of that pure-British aristocrat, Anthony Eden, Clarissa Eden must have seen and known a lot.
But oh so restrained is this memoir, that I had trouble finishing it without falling asleep.
Has she forgotten?
Is she too sensitive to her loves to share her insights?
Or does she just lack the reviewing eye of mind?

Unfortunately for us, she has not given us the opportunity to see through her windows into an age-of-drama past, a stage where giants walked and labored for our lives.

6 people found this helpful

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Mr Bassil A MARDELLI

A combination of shrewdness and intelligence

Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2008

Clarissa is the young wife of England's leading politician whose life had been a flaming dedication to the Empire and all humanitarian ideals that were then believed to erase national lines.
Anthony Eden prefaced his work with dedication. What the Suez war did to the minds of his time was upsetting. Anthony remained, in theory, the ennobling Prime Minister that dedicated his life for the fulfillment of his historic mission: to preserve the Commonwealth.
His main problem was when he saw the Empire slidding under their feet.
Clarissa lived with the man who, if he had received more meaningful support from the superpower -USA- could have stopped and indeed eliminated the usual orgy permitted by inexperienced newcomers to the political arena in different parts of the Commonwealth World.
Clarissa witnessed how startups have released their inhibitions and brought their ruling to the state of raw excitement which was driven to add the fateful effect on their people.
Clarissa saw many emerging and young leaders schooled in a state in which the relation of the subject to the sovereign had no basis other than obedience; comfortable only in the presence of authority.
Like her husband, she had combination of shrewdness, energy and intelligence with a political flexibility unseen in Europe since Talleyrand.

The book is interesting to read.

20 people found this helpful

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Island Reader

Clarissa Eden Memoir

Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2007

This is a brilliant memoir written by a woman of great intelligence and sophistication. She was the niece of Winston Churchill and lived at Downing Street during the Second World War. She later married Anthony Eden. Her gift for description, her humor, and her wisdom illuminate a time of great importance, and her portraits, whether of social or political figures, are deft and shrewd. One can only hope that this is the first of many books to come from Clarissa Eden.

8 people found this helpful

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Malcolm White

Coud be written by a 12 year old

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2011

This is a truly dreadful book. How someone of her intelligence and experience could have managed to write so badly and boringly is beyond me. The book consist of we went here and we did this, this is how I used to write whe I was in school. There is no real insight into any of the characters that you read about or even into any of the politics.

2 people found this helpful

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Nikki Lowry

historically interesting but dull prose

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2022

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Lots of name dropping…an interesting life made boring by lackluster writing. Historically of interest, however, so if you can plow thru, some nice nuggets of information.

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Top reviews from other countries

N. G. Booker

Casting some light on a different and lost age

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 26, 2017

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I agree with most of the other reviews here - even the two stars. It is slight and inclined to be vapid at times on the other hand if you know something about the history of the times it does cast some different if not new light on events and some well known and not so well known and forgotten personalities and politicians. She has some good one liners and observations including one on insulting Princess Margaret on being vertically challenged. What was revealing was her ignorance of how 'others' lived observed in her comments on travelling in the North West, not quite dark satanic mills but very nearly Two things that particularly struck me was firstly Churchill's intransigence about resigning and the willingness of the Cabinet to almost condone his childish bad behaviour and secondly, although I knew this anyway, was that the height of the Suez crisis and after, Eden really was very ill. So we had had Churchill who was losing his mental faculties followed by Eden who was physically ill which in turn must have affected his abilities to make considered decisions.

It is a memoir of a different and deferential age but nevertheless worth reading

Lots of photographs and a good bibliography - now which biography of Eden shall I buy?

One person found this helpful

Kristina Kath

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 26, 2014

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Needed large print book for vision impaired parent. Clean copy,interesting subject and speedy delivery

Mary

Vapid.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 26, 2016

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Very little is revealed about the author, her husband or their friends and if you have the time to struggle to the end of this book, you will have learned nothing about their marriage, his career or their relationship.

2 people found this helpful

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