title: Hindenburg disaster

text: Critics also argue that port side witnesses on the field, as well as crew members stationed in the stern, saw a glow inside Cell 4 before any fire broke out of the skin, indicating that the fire began inside the airship or that after the hydrogen ignited, the invisible fire fed on the gas cell material. Newsreel footage clearly shows that the fire was burning inside the structure.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: Proponents of the paint hypothesis claim that the glow is actually the fire igniting on the starboard side, as seen by some other witnesses. From two eyewitness statements, Bain asserts the fire began near cell 1 behind the tail fins and spread forward before it was seen by witnesses on the port side. However, photographs of the early stages of the fire show the gas cells of the "Hindenburg's" entire aft section fully aflame, and no glow is seen through the areas where the fabric is still intact. Burning gas spewing upward from the top of the airship was causing low pressure inside, allowing atmospheric pressure to press the skin inwards.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: Occasionally, the "Hindenburg" varnish is incorrectly identified as, or stated being similar to, cellulose nitrate which, like most nitrates, burns very readily. Instead, the cellulose acetate butyrate (CAB) used to seal the zeppelin's skin is rated by the plastics industry as combustible but nonflammable. That is, it will burn if placed within a fire but is not readily ignited. Not all fabric on the "Hindenburg" burned. For example, the fabric on the port and starboard tail fins was not completely consumed. That the fabric not near the hydrogen fire did not burn is not consistent with the "explosive" dope hypothesis.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: The TV show "MythBusters" explored the incendiary paint hypothesis. Their findings indicated that the aluminum and iron oxide ratios in the Hindenburg's skin, while certainly flammable, were not enough on their own to destroy the zeppelin. Had the skin contained enough metal to produce pure thermite, the "Hindenburg" would have been too heavy to fly. The MythBusters team also discovered that the "Hindenburg" coated skin had a higher ignition temperature than that of untreated material, and that it would initially burn slowly, but that after some time the fire would begin to accelerate considerably with some indication of a thermite reaction. From this, they concluded that those arguing against the incendiary paint theory may have been wrong about the airship's skin not forming thermite due to the compounds being separated in different layers. Despite this, the skin alone would burn too slowly to account for the rapid spread of the fire, as it would have taken four times the speed for the ship to burn. The MythBusters concluded that the paint may have contributed to the disaster, but that it was not the sole reason for such rapid combustion.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: Although Captain Pruss believed that the "Hindenburg" could withstand tight turns without significant damage, proponents of the puncture hypothesis, including Hugo Eckener, question the airship's structural integrity after being repeatedly stressed over its flight record.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: The airship did not receive much in the way of routine inspections even though there was evidence of at least some damage on previous flights. It is not known whether that damage was properly repaired or even whether all the failures had been found. During the ship's first return flight from Rio, "Hindenburg" had once lost an engine and almost drifted over Africa, where it could have crashed. Afterwards, Eckener ordered section chiefs to inspect the airship during flight. However, the complexity of the airship's structure would make it virtually impossible to detect all weaknesses in the structure. In March 1936, the "Hindenburg" and the "Graf Zeppelin" made three-day flights to drop leaflets and broadcast speeches via loudspeaker. Before the airship's takeoff on March 26, 1936, Ernst Lehmann chose to launch the "Hindenburg" with the wind blowing from behind the airship, instead of into the wind as per standard procedure. During the takeoff, the airship's tail struck the ground, and part of the lower fin was broken. Although that damage was repaired, the force of the impact may have caused internal damage. Only six days before the disaster, it was planned to make the "Hindenburg" have a hook on her hull to carry aircraft, similar to the US Navy's use of the USS "Akron" and the USS "Macon" airships. However, the trials were unsuccessful as the biplane hit the "Hindenburg"s trapeze several times. The structure of the airship may have been further affected by this incident.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: Newsreels, as well as the map of the landing approach, show that the "Hindenburg" made several sharp turns, first towards port and then starboard, just before the accident. Proponents posit that either of these turns could have weakened the structure near the vertical fins, causing a bracing wire to snap and puncture at least one of the internal gas cells. Additionally, some of the bracing wires may have even been substandard. One bracing wire tested after the crash broke at a mere 70% of its rated load. A punctured cell would have freed hydrogen into the air and could have been ignited by a static discharge (see above), or it is also possible that the broken bracing wire struck a girder, causing sparks to ignite hydrogen. When the fire started, people on board the airship reported hearing a muffled detonation, but outside, a ground crew member on the starboard side reported hearing a crack. Some speculate the sound was from a bracing wire snapping.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: Eckener concluded that the puncture hypothesis, due to pilot error, was the most likely explanation for the disaster. He held Captains Pruss and Lehmann, and Charles Rosendahl responsible for what he viewed as a rushed landing procedure with the airship badly out of trim under poor weather conditions. Pruss had made the sharp turn under Lehmann's pressure; while Rosendahl called the airship in for landing, believing the conditions were suitable. Eckener noted that a smaller storm front followed the thunderstorm front, creating conditions suitable for static sparks.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: During the US inquiry, Eckener testified that he believed that the fire was caused by the ignition of hydrogen by a static spark:


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: However, the apparent stern heaviness during the landing approach was noticed thirty minutes before the landing approach, indicating that a gas leak resulting from a sharp turn did not cause the initial stern heaviness.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: The 2001 documentary "Hindenburg Disaster: Probable Cause" suggested that 16-year-old Bobby Rutan, who claimed that he had smelled "gasoline" when he was standing below the "Hindenburg" aft port engine, had detected a diesel fuel leak. During the investigation, Commander Charles Rosendahl dismissed the boy's report. The day before the disaster, a fuel pump had broken during the flight, but the chief engineer testified that the pump had been replaced. The resulting vapor of a diesel leak, in addition to the engines being overheated, would have been highly flammable and could have self-combusted.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: However, the documentary makes numerous mistakes into assuming that the fire began in the keel. First, it implies that the crewmen in the lower fin had seen the fire start in the keel and that Hans Freund and Helmut Lau looked towards the front of the airship to see the fire, when Freund was actually looking rearward when the fire started. Most witnesses on the ground reported seeing flames at the top of the ship, but the only location where a fuel leak could have a potential ignition source is the engines. Additionally, while investigators in the documentary suggest it is possible for a fire in the keel to go unnoticed until it breaks the top section, other investigators such as Greg Feith consider it unlikely because the only point diesel comes into contact with a hot surface is the engines.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: Regardless of the source of ignition or the initial fuel for the fire, there remains the question of what caused the rapid spread of flames along the length of the airship, with debate again centered on the fabric covering of the airship and the hydrogen used for buoyancy.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: Proponents of both the incendiary paint hypothesis and the hydrogen hypothesis agree that the fabric coatings were probably responsible for the rapid spread of the fire. The combustion of hydrogen is not usually visible to the human eye in daylight, because most of its radiation is not in the visible portion of the spectrum but rather ultraviolet. Thus what can be seen burning in the photographs cannot be hydrogen. However, black-and-white photographic film of the era had a different light sensitivity spectrum than the human eye, and was sensitive farther out into the infrared and ultraviolet regions than the human eye. While hydrogen tends to burn invisibly, the materials around it, if combustible, would change the color of the fire.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: The motion picture films show the fire spreading downward along the skin of the airship. While fires generally tend to burn upward, especially including hydrogen fires, the enormous radiant heat from the blaze would have quickly spread fire over the entire surface of the airship, thus apparently explaining the downward propagation of the flames. Falling, burning debris would also appear as downward streaks of fire.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: Those skeptical of the incendiary paint hypothesis cite recent technical papers which claim that even if the airship had been coated with actual rocket fuel, it would have taken many hours to burn – not the 32 to 37 seconds that it actually took.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: Modern experiments that recreated the fabric and coating materials of the "Hindenburg" seem to discredit the incendiary fabric hypothesis. They conclude that it would have taken about 40 hours for the "Hindenburg" to burn if the fire had been driven by combustible fabric. Two additional scientific papers also strongly reject the fabric hypothesis. However, the MythBusters "Hindenburg" special seemed to indicate that while the hydrogen was the dominant driving force the burning fabric doping was significant with differences in how each burned visible in the original footage.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: The most conclusive proof against the fabric hypothesis is in the photographs of the actual accident as well as the many airships which were not doped with aluminum powder and still exploded violently. When a single gas cell explodes, it creates a shock wave and heat. The shock wave tends to rip nearby bags which then explode themselves. In the case of the Ahlhorn disaster on January 5, 1918, explosions of airships in one hangar caused the explosions of others in three adjoining hangars, wiping out all five Zeppelins at the base.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: The photos of the "Hindenburg" disaster clearly show that after the cells in the aft section of the airship exploded and the combustion products were vented out the top of the airship, the fabric on the rear section was still largely intact, and air pressure from the outside was acting upon it, caving the sides of the airship inward due to the reduction of pressure caused by the venting of combustion gases out the top.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: The loss of lift at the rear caused the airship to nose up suddenly and the back to break in half (the airship was still in one piece), at that time the primary mode for the fire to spread was along the axial gangway which acted as a chimney, conducting fire which burst out the nose as the airship's tail touched the ground, and as seen in one of the most famous pictures of the disaster.


title: Hindenburg disaster

text: The actual site of the "Hindenburg" crash is at Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst. It is marked with a chain-outlined pad and bronze plaque where the airship's gondola landed. It was dedicated on May 6, 1987, the 50th anniversary of the disaster. Hangar No. 1, which still stands, is where the airship was to be housed after landing. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1968. Pre-registered tours are held through the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society.


title: Odyssey

text: The Odyssey (; , ) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the "Iliad", the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all his crew mates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.


title: Odyssey

text: The "Odyssey" was originally composed in Homeric Greek in around the 8th or 7th century BCE and, by the mid-6th century BCE, had become part of the Greek literary canon. In antiquity, Homer's authorship of the poem was not questioned, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" were composed independently and that the stories formed as part of a long oral tradition. Given widespread illiteracy, the poem was performed by an "aoidos" or rhapsode and was more likely to be heard than read.


title: Odyssey

text: Crucial themes in the poem include the ideas of "nostos" (νόστος; "return"), wandering, "xenia" (ξενία; "guest-friendship"), testing, and omens. Scholars still reflect on the narrative significance of certain groups in the poem, such as women and slaves, who have a more prominent role in the epic than in many other works of ancient literature. This focus is especially remarkable when contrasted with the "Iliad", which centres the exploits of soldiers and kings during the Trojan War.


title: Odyssey

text: The "Odyssey" is regarded as one of the most significant works of the Western canon. The first English translation of the "Odyssey" was in the 16th century. Adaptations and re-imaginings continue to be produced across a wide variety of media. In 2018, when "BBC Culture" polled experts around the world to find literature's most enduring narrative, the "Odyssey" topped the list.


title: Odyssey

text: The "Odyssey" begins after the end of the ten-year Trojan War (the subject of the "Iliad"), from which Odysseus (also known by the Latin variant Ulysses), king of Ithaca, has still not returned because he angered Poseidon, the god of the sea. Odysseus' son, Telemachus, is about 20 years old and is sharing his absent father's house on the island of Ithaca with his mother Penelope and the suitors of Penelope, a crowd of 108 boisterous young men who each aim to persuade Penelope for her hand in marriage, all the while reveling in the king's palace and eating up his wealth.


title: Odyssey

text: Odysseus' protectress, the goddess Athena, asks Zeus, king of the gods, to finally allow Odysseus to return home when Poseidon is absent from Mount Olympus. Disguised as a chieftain named Mentes, Athena visits Telemachus to urge him to search for news of his father. He offers her hospitality, and they observe the suitors dining rowdily while Phemius, the bard, performs a narrative poem for them.


title: Odyssey

text: That night, Athena, disguised as Telemachus, finds a ship and crew for the true prince. The next morning, Telemachus calls an assembly of citizens of Ithaca to discuss what should be done with the insolent suitors, who then scoff at Telemachus. Accompanied by Athena (now disguised as Mentor), the son of Odysseus departs for the Greek mainland to the household of Nestor, most venerable of the Greek warriors at Troy, who resided in Pylos after the war.


title: Odyssey

text: From there, Telemachus rides to Sparta, accompanied by Nestor's son. There he finds Menelaus and Helen, who are now reconciled. Both Helen and Menelaus also say that they returned to Sparta after a long voyage by way of Egypt. There, on the island of Pharos, Menelaus encounters the old sea-god Proteus, who tells him that Odysseus was a captive of the nymph Calypso. Telemachus learns the fate of Menelaus' brother, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and leader of the Greeks at Troy: he was murdered on his return home by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. The story briefly shifts to the suitors, who have only just realized that Telemachus is gone. Angry, they formulate a plan to ambush his ship and kill him as he sails back home. Penelope overhears their plot and worries for her son's safety.


title: Odyssey

text: In the course of Odysseus' seven years as a captive of Calypso on the island Ogygia, she has fallen deeply in love with him, even though he spurns her offers of immortality as her husband and still mourns for home. She is ordered to release him by the messenger god Hermes, who has been sent by Zeus in response to Athena's plea. Odysseus builds a raft and is given clothing, food, and drink by Calypso. When Poseidon learns that Odysseus has escaped, he wrecks the raft, but helped by a veil given by the sea nymph Ino, Odysseus swims ashore on Scherie, the island of the Phaeacians. Naked and exhausted, he hides in a pile of leaves and falls asleep.


title: Odyssey

text: The next morning, awakened by girls' laughter, he sees the young Nausicaä, who has gone to the seashore with her maids after Athena told her in a dream to do so. He appeals for help. She encourages him to seek the hospitality of her parents, Arete and Alcinous. Alcinous promises to provide him a ship to return him home without knowing the identity of Odysseus. He remains for several days. Odysseus asks the blind singer Demodocus to tell the story of the Trojan Horse, a stratagem in which Odysseus had played a leading role. Unable to hide his emotion as he relives this episode, Odysseus at last reveals his identity. He then tells the story of his return from Troy.


title: Odyssey

text: Odysseus recounts his story to the Phaeacians. After a failed raid against the Cicones, Odysseus and his twelve ships were driven off course by storms. Odysseus visited the lotus-eaters who gave his men their fruit which caused them to forget their homecoming. Odysseus had to drag them back to the ship by force.


title: Odyssey

text: Afterward, Odysseus and his men landed on a lush, uninhabited island near the land of the Cyclopes. The men entered the cave of Polyphemus, where they found all the cheeses and meat they desired. Upon returning to his cave, Polyphemus sealed the entrance with a massive boulder and proceeded to eat Odysseus' men. Odysseus devised an escape plan in which he, identifying himself as "Nobody," plied Polyphemus with wine and blinded him with a wooden stake. When Polyphemus cried out, his neighbors left after Polyphemus claimed that "Nobody" had attacked him. Odysseus and his men finally escaped the cave by hiding on the underbellies of the sheep as they were let out of the cave.


title: Odyssey

text: As they escaped, however, Odysseus taunted Polyphemus and revealed himself. The Cyclops prayed to his father Poseidon, asking him to curse Odysseus to wander for ten years. After the escape, Aeolus gave Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds except the west wind, a gift that should have ensured a safe return home. Just as Ithaca came into sight, the sailors opened the bag while Odysseus slept, thinking it contained gold. The winds flew out, and the storm drove the ships back the way they had come. Aeolus, recognizing that Odysseus had drawn the ire of the gods, refused to further assist him.


title: Odyssey

text: After the cannibalistic Laestrygonians destroyed all of his ships except his own, Odysseus sailed on and reached the island of Aeaea, home of witch-goddess Circe. She turned half of his men into swine with drugged cheese and wine. Hermes warned Odysseus about Circe and gave Odysseus an herb called moly, making him resistant to Circe's magic. Odysseus forced Circe to change his men back to their human forms and was seduced by her. They remained with her for one year. Finally, guided by Circe's instructions, Odysseus and his crew crossed the ocean and reached a harbor at the western edge of the world, where Odysseus sacrificed to the dead. Odysseus summoned the spirit of the prophet Tiresias and was told that he may return home if he is able to stay himself and his crew from eating the sacred livestock of Helios on the island of Thrinacia and that failure to do so would result in the loss of his ship and his entire crew. He then meets his dead mother Anticleia and first learns of the suitors and what happened in Ithaca in his absence Odysseus also converses with his dead comrades from Troy.


title: Odyssey

text: Returning to Aeaea, they buried Elpenor and were advised by Circe on the remaining stages of the journey. They skirted the land of the Sirens. All of the sailors had their ears plugged up with beeswax, except for Odysseus, who was tied to the mast as he wanted to hear the song. He told his sailors not to untie him as it would only make him drown himself. They then passed between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Scylla claimed six of his men.


title: Odyssey

text: Next, they landed on the island of Thrinacia, with the crew overriding Odysseus's wishes to remain away from the island. Zeus caused a storm that prevented them from leaving, causing them to deplete the food given to them by Circe. While Odysseus was away praying, his men ignored the warnings of Tiresias and Circe and hunted the sacred cattle. Helios insisted that Zeus punish the men for this sacrilege. They suffered a shipwreck, and all but Odysseus drowned as he clung to a fig tree. Washed ashore on Ogygia, he remained there as Calypso's lover.


title: Odyssey

text: Having listened to his story, the Phaeacians agree to provide Odysseus with more treasure than he would have received from the spoils of Troy. They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbour on Ithaca. Odysseus awakens and believes that he has been dropped on a distant land before Athena appears to him and reveals that he is indeed on Ithaca. She hides his treasure in a nearby cave and disguises him as an elderly beggar so he can see how things stand in his household. He finds his way to the hut of one of his own slaves, swineherd Eumaeus, who treats him hospitably and speaks favorably of Odysseus. After dinner, the disguised Odysseus tells the farm laborers a fictitious tale of himself.


title: Odyssey

text: Telemachus sails home from Sparta, evading an ambush set by the suitors. He disembarks on the coast of Ithaca and meets Odysseus. Odysseus identifies himself to Telemachus (but not to Eumaeus), and they decide that the suitors must be killed. Telemachus goes home first. Accompanied by Eumaeus, Odysseus returns to his own house, still pretending to be a beggar. He is ridiculed by the suitors in his own home, especially Antinous. Odysseus meets Penelope and tests her intentions by saying he once met Odysseus in Crete. Closely questioned, he adds that he had recently been in Thesprotia and had learned something there of Odysseus's recent wanderings.


title: Odyssey

text: Odysseus's identity is discovered by the housekeeper Eurycleia when she recognizes an old scar as she is washing his feet. Eurycleia tries to tell Penelope about the beggar's true identity, but Athena makes sure that Penelope cannot hear her. Odysseus swears Eurycleia to secrecy.


title: Odyssey

text: The next day, at Athena's prompting, Penelope maneuvers the suitors into competing for her hand with an archery competition using Odysseus' bow. The man who can string the bow and shoot an arrow through a dozen axe heads would win. Odysseus takes part in the competition, and he alone is strong enough to string the bow and shoot the arrow through the dozen axe heads, making him the winner. He then throws off his rags and kills Antinous with his next arrow. Odysseus kills the other suitors, first using the rest of the arrows and then by swords and spears. Once the battle is won, Telemachus also hangs twelve of their household maids whom Eurycleia identifies as guilty of betraying Penelope or having sex with the suitors. Odysseus identifies himself to Penelope. She is hesitant but recognizes him when he mentions that he made their bed from an olive tree still rooted to the ground. She embraces him and they sleep,


title: Odyssey

text: The next day, Odysseus goes to his father Laertes's farm and reveals himself. Following them to the farm is a group of Ithacans, led by Eupeithes, father of Antinous, who are out for revenge for the murder of the suitors. A battle breaks out, but it is stopped by Athena and Zeus.


title: Odyssey

text: The "Odyssey" is 12,109 lines composed in dactylic hexameter, also called Homeric hexameter. It opens "in medias res", in the middle of the overall story, with prior events described through flashbacks and storytelling. The 24 books correspond to the letters of the Greek alphabet; the division was likely made after the poem's composition, by someone other than Homer, but is generally accepted.


title: Odyssey

text: In the Classical period, some of the books (individually and in groups) were commonly given their own titles:


title: Odyssey

text: Book 22 concludes the Greek Epic Cycle, though fragments remain of the "alternative ending" of sorts known as the "Telegony". The "Telegony" aside, the last 548 lines of the "Odyssey", corresponding to Book 24, are believed by many scholars to have been added by a slightly later poet.


title: Odyssey

text: The events in the main sequence of the "Odyssey" (excluding Odysseus' embedded narrative of his wanderings) have been said to take place in the Peloponnese and in what are now called the Ionian Islands. There are difficulties in the apparently simple identification of Ithaca, the homeland of Odysseus, which may or may not be the same island that is now called (modern Greek: ). The wanderings of Odysseus as told to the Phaeacians, and the location of the Phaeacians' own island of Scheria, pose more fundamental problems, if geography is to be applied: scholars, both ancient and modern, are divided as to whether any of the places visited by Odysseus (after Ismaros and before his return to Ithaca) are real. Both antiquated and contemporary scholars have attempted to map Odysseus' journey but now largely agree that the landscapes, especially of the Apologia (Books 9 to 11), include too many mythological aspects as features to be unequivocally mappable. Classicist Peter T. Struck created an interactive map which plots Odysseus' travels, including his near homecoming which was thwarted by the bag of wind.


title: Odyssey

text: Scholars have seen strong influences from Near Eastern mythology and literature in the "Odyssey". Martin West notes substantial parallels between the "Epic of Gilgamesh" and the "Odyssey". Both Odysseus and Gilgamesh are known for traveling to the ends of the earth and on their journeys go to the land of the dead. On his voyage to the underworld, Odysseus follows instructions given to him by Circe, who is located at the edges of the world and is associated through imagery with the sun. Like Odysseus, Gilgamesh gets directions on how to reach the land of the dead from a divine helper: the goddess Siduri, who, like Circe, dwells by the sea at the ends of the earth, whose home is also associated with the sun. Gilgamesh reaches Siduri's house by passing through a tunnel underneath Mt. Mashu, the high mountain from which the sun comes into the sky. West argues that the similarity of Odysseus' and Gilgamesh's journeys to the edges of the earth are the result of the influence of the Gilgamesh epic upon the "Odyssey".


title: Odyssey

text: In 1914, paleontologist Othenio Abel surmised the origins of the Cyclops to be the result of ancient Greeks finding an elephant skull. The enormous nasal passage in the middle of the forehead could have looked like the eye socket of a giant, to those who had never seen a living elephant. Classical scholars, on the other hand, have long known that the story of the Cyclops was originally a folk tale, which existed independently of the "Odyssey" and which became part of it at a later date. Similar stories are found in cultures across Europe and the Middle East. According to this explanation, the Cyclops was originally simply a giant or ogre, much like Humbaba in the "Epic of Gilgamesh". Graham Anderson suggests that the addition about it having only one eye was invented to explain how the creature was so easily blinded.


title: Odyssey

text: Homecoming (Ancient Greek: "νόστος, nostos") is a central theme of the "Odyssey." Anna Bonafazi of the University of Cologne writes that, in Homer, "nostos" is "return home from Troy, by sea". Agatha Thornton examines "nostos" in the context of characters other than Odysseus, in order to provide an alternative for what might happen after the end of the "Odyssey". For instance, one example is that of Agamemnon's homecoming versus Odysseus'. Upon Agamemnon's return, his wife Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus kill Agamemnon. Agamemnon's son, Orestes, out of vengeance for his father's death, kills Aegisthus. This parallel compares the death of the suitors to the death of Aegisthus and sets Orestes up as an example for Telemachus. Also, because Odysseus knows about Clytemnestra's betrayal, Odysseus returns home in disguise in order to test the loyalty of his own wife, Penelope. Later, Agamemnon praises Penelope for not killing Odysseus. It is because of Penelope that Odysseus has fame and a successful homecoming. This successful homecoming is unlike Achilles, who has fame but is dead, and Agamemnon, who had an unsuccessful homecoming resulting in his death.


title: Odyssey

text: Only two of Odysseus's adventures are described by the narrator. The rest of Odysseus' adventures are recounted by Odysseus himself. The two scenes described by the narrator are Odysseus on Calypso's island and Odysseus' encounter with the Phaeacians. These scenes are told by the poet to represent an important transition in Odysseus' journey: being concealed to returning home.


title: Odyssey

text: Calypso's name comes from the Greek word (), meaning 'to cover' or 'conceal', which is apt, as this is exactly what she does with Odysseus. Calypso keeps Odysseus concealed from the world and unable to return home. After leaving Calypso's island, the poet describes Odysseus' encounters with the Phaeacians—those who "convoy without hurt to all men"—which represents his transition from not returning home to returning home.


title: Odyssey

text: Also, during Odysseus' journey, he encounters many beings that are close to the gods. These encounters are useful in understanding that Odysseus is in a world beyond man and that influences the fact he cannot return home. These beings that are close to the gods include the Phaeacians who lived near the Cyclopes, whose king, Alcinous, is the great-grandson of the king of the giants, Eurymedon, and the grandson of Poseidon. Some of the other characters that Odysseus encounters are the cyclops Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon; Circe, a sorceress who turns men into animals; and the cannibalistic giants, the Laestrygonians.


title: Odyssey

text: Throughout the course of the epic, Odysseus encounters several examples of "xenia" ("guest-friendship"), which provide models of how hosts should and should not act. The Phaeacians demonstrate exemplary guest-friendship by feeding Odysseus, giving him a place to sleep, and granting him many gifts and a safe voyage home, which are all things a good host should do. Polyphemus demonstrates poor guest-friendship. His only "gift" to Odysseus is that he will eat him last. Calypso also exemplifies poor guest-friendship because she does not allow Odysseus to leave her island. Another important factor to guest-friendship is that kingship implies generosity. It is assumed that a king has the means to be a generous host and is more generous with his own property. This is best seen when Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, begs Antinous, one of the suitors, for food and Antinous denies his request. Odysseus essentially says that while Antinous may look like a king, he is far from a king since he is not generous.


title: Odyssey

text: Another important factor of guest-friendship is not keeping the guest longer than they wish and also promising their safety while they are a guest within the host's home.


title: Odyssey

text: Another theme throughout the "Odyssey" is testing. This occurs in two distinct ways. Odysseus tests the loyalty of others and others test Odysseus' identity. An example of Odysseus testing the loyalties of others is when he returns home. Instead of immediately revealing his identity, he arrives disguised as a beggar and then proceeds to determine who in his house has remained loyal to him and who has helped the suitors. After Odysseus reveals his true identity, the characters test Odysseus' identity to see if he really is who he says he is. For instance, Penelope tests Odysseus' identity by saying that she will move the bed into the other room for him. This is a difficult task since it is made out of a living tree that would require being cut down, a fact that only the real Odysseus would know, thus proving his identity.


title: Odyssey

text: Testing also has a very specific type scene that accompanies it. Throughout the epic, the testing of others follows a typical pattern. This pattern is:


title: Odyssey

text: Omens occur frequently throughout the "Odyssey". Within the epic poem, they frequently involve birds. According to Thornton, most crucial is who receives each omen and in what way it manifests. For instance, bird omens are shown to Telemachus, Penelope, Odysseus, and the suitors. Telemachus and Penelope receive their omens as well in the form of words, sneezes, and dreams. However, Odysseus is the only character who receives thunder or lightning as an omen. She highlights this as crucial because lightning, as a symbol of Zeus, represents the kingship of Odysseus. Odysseus is associated with Zeus throughout both the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey."


title: Odyssey

text: Omens are another example of a type scene in the "Odyssey." Two important parts of an omen type scene are the "recognition" of the omen, followed by its "interpretation". In the "Odyssey", all of the bird omens—with the exception of the first—show large birds attacking smaller birds. Accompanying each omen is a wish which can be either explicitly stated or only implied. For example, Telemachus wishes for vengeance and for Odysseus to be home, Penelope wishes for Odysseus' return, and the suitors wish for the death of Telemachus.


title: Odyssey

text: The date of the poem is a matter of some disagreement among classicists. In the middle of the 8th century BCE, the inhabitants of Greece began to adopt a modified version of the Phoenician alphabet to write down their own language. The Homeric poems may have been one of the earliest products of that literacy, and if so, would have been composed some time in the late 8th century BCE. Inscribed on a clay cup found in Ischia, Italy, are the words "Nestor's cup, good to drink from." Some scholars, such as Calvert Watkins, have tied this cup to a description of King Nestor's golden cup in the "Iliad." If the cup is an allusion to the "Iliad", that poem's composition can be dated to at least 700–750 BCE.


title: Odyssey

text: Dating is similarly complicated by the fact that the Homeric poems, or sections of them, were performed regularly by rhapsodes for several hundred years. The "Odyssey" as it exists today is likely not significantly different. Aside from minor differences, the Homeric poems gained a canonical place in the institutions of ancient Athens by the 6th century. In 566 BCE, Peisistratos instituted a civic and religious festival called the Panathenaia, which featured performances of Homeric poems. These are significant because a "correct" version of the poems had to be performed, indicating that a particular version of the text had become canonised.


title: Odyssey

text: The "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" were widely copied and used as school texts in lands where the Greek language was spoken throughout antiquity. Scholars may have begun to write commentaries on the poems as early as the time of Aristotle in the 4th century BCE. In the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE, scholars affiliated with the Library of Alexandria—particularly Zenodotus and Aristarchus of Samothrace—edited the Homeric poems, wrote commentaries on them, and helped establish the canonical texts.


title: Odyssey

text: The "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" remained widely studied and used as school texts in the Byzantine Empire during the Middle Ages. The Byzantine Greek scholar and archbishop Eustathios of Thessalonike (c. 1115–1195/6 AD) wrote exhaustive commentaries on both of the Homeric epics that became seen by later generations as authoritative; his commentary on the "Odyssey" alone spans nearly 2,000 oversized pages in a twentieth-century edition. The first printed edition of the "Odyssey", known as the "editio princeps", was produced in 1488 by the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles, who had been born in Athens and had studied in Constantinople. His edition was printed in Milan by a Greek printer named Antonios Damilas.


title: Odyssey

text: Since the late 19th century, many papyri containing fragments of the "Odyssey" have been found in Egypt, some with content different from later medieval versions.


title: Odyssey

text: In 2018, the Greek Cultural Ministry revealed the discovery of a clay tablet near the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, containing 13 verses from the "Odyssey" 14th book. While it was initially reported to date from the 3rd century AD, the date is unconfirmed.


title: Odyssey

text: The poet George Chapman finished the first complete English translation of the "Odyssey" in 1614, which was set in rhyming couplets of iambic pentameter. Emily Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, notes that as late as the first decade of the 21st century, almost all of the most prominent translators of Greek and Roman literature had been men. She calls her experience of translating Homer one of "intimate alienation." Wilson writes that this has affected the popular conception of characters and events of the "Odyssey," inflecting the story with connotations not present in the original text: "For instance, in the scene where Telemachus oversees the hanging of the slaves who have been sleeping with the suitors, most translations introduce derogatory language ("sluts" or "whores") [...] The original Greek does not label these slaves with derogatory language." In the original Greek, the word used is "hai", the feminine article, equivalent to "those female people".


title: Odyssey

text: The influence of the Homeric texts can be difficult to summarise because of how greatly they have impacted the popular imagination and cultural values. The "Odyssey" and the "Iliad" formed the basis of education for members of ancient Mediterranean society. That curriculum was adopted by Western humanists, meaning the text was so much a part of the cultural fabric that it became irrelevant whether an individual had read it. As such, the influence of the "Odyssey" has reverberated through over a millennium of writing. The poem topped a poll of experts by "BBC Culture" to find literature's most enduring narrative. It is widely regarded by western literary critics as a timeless classic and remains one of the oldest works of extant literature commonly read by Western audiences.


title: Odyssey

text: In Canto XXVI of the "Inferno", Dante Alighieri meets Odysseus in the eighth circle of hell, where Odysseus appends a new ending to the "Odyssey" in which he never returns to Ithaca and instead continues his restless adventuring. Edith Hall suggests that Dante's depiction of Odysseus became understood as a manifestation of Renaissance colonialism and othering, with the cyclops standing in for "accounts of monstrous races on the edge of the world", and his defeat as symbolising "the Roman domination of the western Mediterranean".


title: Odyssey

text: Irish poet James Joyce's modernist novel "Ulysses" (1922) was significantly influenced by the "Odyssey". Joyce had encountered the figure of Odysseus in Charles Lamb's "Adventures of Ulysses", an adaptation of the epic poem for children, which seems to have established the Latin name in Joyce's mind. "Ulysses," a re-telling of the "Odyssey" set in Dublin, is divided into 18 sections ("episodes") which can be mapped roughly onto the 24 books of the "Odyssey". Joyce claimed familiarity with the original Homeric Greek, but this has been disputed by some scholars, who cite his poor grasp of the language as evidence to the contrary. The book, and especially its stream of consciousness prose, is widely considered foundational to the modernist genre.


title: Odyssey

text: Modern writers have revisited the "Odyssey" to highlight the poem's female characters. Canadian writer Margaret Atwood adapted parts of the "Odyssey" for her novella, "The Penelopiad" (2005). The novella focuses on Penelope and the twelve female slaves hanged by Odysseus at the poem's ending, an image which haunted Atwood. Atwood's novella comments on the original text, wherein Odysseus' successful return to Ithaca symbolises the restoration of a patriarchal system. Similarly, Madeline Miller's "Circe" (2018) revisits the relationship between Odysseus and Circe on Aeaea. As a reader, Miller was frustrated by Circe's lack of motivation in the original poem and sought to explain her capriciousness. The novel recontextualises the sorceress' transformations of sailors into pigs from an act of malice into one of self-defence, given that she has no superhuman strength with which to repel attackers.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Conservative Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 until his resignation in 1957.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Achieving rapid promotion as a young Conservative member of Parliament, he became foreign secretary aged 38, before resigning in protest at Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy. He again held that position for most of the Second World War, and a third time in the early 1950s. Having been deputy to Winston Churchill for almost 15 years, Eden succeeded him as the leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister in 1955, and a month later won a general election.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden's reputation as a skilled diplomat was overshadowed in 1956 when the United States refused to support the Anglo-French military response to the Suez Crisis, which critics across party lines regarded as a historic setback for British foreign policy, signalling the end of British influence in the Middle East. Most historians argue that he made a series of blunders, especially not realising the depth of American opposition to military action. Two months after ordering an end to the Suez operation, he resigned as Prime Minister on grounds of ill health, and because he was widely suspected of having misled the House of Commons over the degree of collusion with France and Israel.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden is generally considered to be among the least successful of British prime ministers in the 20th century, although two broadly sympathetic biographies have gone some way to shifting the balance of opinion. He was the first out of fifteen British prime ministers to be appointed by Queen Elizabeth II in her seventy-year reign.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden was born on 12 June 1897 at Windlestone Hall, County Durham, into a conservative family of landed gentry. He was the third of four sons of Sir William Eden, 7th and 5th Baronet, and Sybil Frances Grey, a member of the prominent Grey family of Northumberland. Sir William was a former colonel and local magistrate from an old titled family. An eccentric and often foul-tempered man, he was a talented watercolourist, portraitist, and collector of Impressionists. Eden's mother had wanted to marry Francis Knollys, who later became a significant Royal adviser, but the match was forbidden by the Prince of Wales. Although she was a popular figure locally, she had a strained relationship with her children, and her profligacy ruined the family fortunes, meaning Eden's elder brother Tim had to sell Windlestone in 1936. Referring to his parentage, Rab Butler would later quip that Anthony Eden— a handsome but ill-tempered man— was "half mad baronet, half beautiful woman".


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden's great-grandfather was William Iremonger, who commanded the 2nd Regiment of Foot during the Peninsular War and fought under Wellington (as he became) at Vimeiro. He was also descended from Governor Sir Robert Eden, 1st Baronet, of Maryland and, through the Calvert family of Maryland, he was connected to the ancient Roman Catholic aristocracy of the Arundell and Howard families (including the Dukes of Norfolk), as well as Anglican families including as the earls of Carlisle, Effingham and Suffolk. The Calverts had converted to the Established Church early in the 18th century to regain the proprietorship of Maryland. He also had some Danish (the Schaffalitzky de Muckadell family) and Norwegian (the Bie family) descent. Eden was once amused to learn that one of his ancestors had, like Churchill's ancestor the Duke of Marlborough, been the lover of Barbara Castlemaine.


title: Anthony Eden

text: There was speculation for many years that Eden's biological father was the politician and man of letters George Wyndham, but this is considered impossible as Wyndham was in South Africa at the time of Eden's conception. Eden's mother was rumoured to have had an affair with Wyndham. His mother and Wyndham exchanged affectionate communications in 1896 but Wyndham was an infrequent visitor to Windlestone and probably did not reciprocate Sybil's feelings. Eden was amused by the rumours but, according to his biographer Rhodes James, probably did not believe them. He did not resemble his siblings, but his father Sir William attributed this to his being "a Grey, not an Eden".


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden had an elder brother, John, who was killed in action in 1914, and a younger brother, Nicholas, who was killed when the battlecruiser blew up and sank at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden was educated at two independent schools. He attended Sandroyd School in Wiltshire from 1907 to 1910, where he excelled in languages. He then started at Eton College in January 1911. There, he won a Divinity prize and excelled at cricket, rugby and rowing, winning House colours in the last.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden learned French and German on continental holidays and, as a child, is said to have spoken French better than English. Although Eden was able to converse with Adolf Hitler in German in February 1934 and with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai in French at Geneva in 1954, he preferred, out of a sense of professionalism, to have interpreters translate at formal meetings.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Although Eden later claimed to have had no interest in politics until the early 1920s, his biographer writes that his teenage letters and diaries "only really come to life" when discussing the subject. He was a strong, partisan Conservative, thinking his protectionist father "a fool" in November 1912 for trying to block his free-trade supporting uncle from a Parliamentary candidacy. He rejoiced in the defeat of Charles Masterman at a by-election in May 1914 and once astonished his mother on a train journey by telling her the MP and the size of his majority for each constituency through which they passed. By 1914 he was a member of the Eton Society ("Pop").


title: Anthony Eden

text: During the First World War, Eden's elder brother, Lieutenant John Eden, was killed in action on 17 October 1914, at the age of 26, while serving with the 12th (Prince of Wales's Royal) Lancers. He is buried in Larch Wood (Railway Cutting) Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery in Belgium. His uncle Robin was later shot down and captured whilst serving with the Royal Flying Corps.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Volunteering for service in the British Army, like many others of his generation, Eden served with the 21st (Yeoman Rifles) Battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC), a Kitchener's Army unit, initially recruited mainly from County Durham country labourers, who were increasingly replaced by Londoners after losses at the Somme in mid-1916. He was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant on 2 November 1915 (antedated to 29 September 1915). His battalion transferred to the Western Front on 4 May 1916 as part of the 41st Division. On 31 May 1916, Eden's younger brother, Midshipman William Nicholas Eden, was killed in action, aged 16, on board during the Battle of Jutland. He is commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial. His brother-in-law, Lord Brooke, was wounded during the war.


title: Anthony Eden

text: One summer night in 1916, near Ploegsteert, Eden had to lead a small raid into an enemy trench to kill or capture enemy soldiers to identify the enemy units opposite. He and his men were pinned down in no man's land under enemy fire, his sergeant seriously wounded in the leg. Eden sent one man back to British lines to fetch another man and a stretcher, and he and three others carried the wounded sergeant back with, as he later put it in his memoirs, a "chilly feeling down our spines", unsure whether the Germans had not seen them in the dark or were chivalrously declining to fire. He omitted to mention that he had been awarded the Military Cross (MC) for the incident, of which he made little mention in his political career. On 18 September 1916, after the Battle of Flers-Courcelette (part of the Battle of the Somme), he wrote to his mother, "I have seen things lately that I am not likely to forget". On 3 October, he was appointed an adjutant, with the rank of temporary lieutenant for the duration of that appointment. At the age of 19, he was the youngest adjutant on the Western Front.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden's MC was gazetted in the 1917 Birthday Honours list. His battalion fought at Messines Ridge in June 1917. On 1 July 1917, Eden was confirmed as a temporary lieutenant, relinquishing his appointment as adjutant three days later. His battalion fought in the first few days of Third Battle of Ypres (31 July – 4 August). Between 20 and 23 September 1917 his battalion spent a few days on coastal defence on the Franco-Belgian border.


title: Anthony Eden

text: On 19 November, Eden was transferred to the General Staff as a General Staff Officer Grade 3 (GSO3), with the temporary rank of captain. He served at Second Army HQ between mid-November 1917 and 8 March 1918, missing out on service in Italy (as the 41st Division had been transferred there after the Italian Second Army was defeated at the Battle of Caporetto). Eden returned to the Western Front as a major German offensive was clearly imminent, only for his former battalion to be disbanded to help alleviate the British Army's acute manpower shortage. Although David Lloyd George, then the British prime minister, was one of the few politicians of whom Eden reported frontline soldiers speaking highly, he wrote to his sister (23 December 1917) in disgust at his "wait and see twaddle" in declining to extend conscription to Ireland.


title: Anthony Eden

text: In March 1918, during the German spring offensive, he was stationed near La Fère on the Oise, opposite Adolf Hitler, as he learned at a conference in 1935. At one point, when brigade HQ was bombed by German aircraft, his companion told him, "There now, you have had your first taste of the next war." On 26 May 1918, he was appointed brigade major of the 198th Infantry Brigade, part of the 66th Division. At the age of 20, Eden was the youngest brigade major in the British Army.


title: Anthony Eden

text: He considered standing for Parliament at the end of the war, but the general election was called too early for that to be possible. After the Armistice with Germany, he spent the winter of 1918–1919 in the Ardennes with his brigade; on 28 March 1919, he transferred to be brigade major of the 99th Infantry Brigade. Eden contemplated applying for a commission in the Regular Army, but these were very hard to come by with the army contracting so rapidly. He initially shrugged off his mother's suggestion of studying at Oxford. He also rejected the thought of becoming a barrister. His preferred career alternatives at this stage were standing for Parliament for Bishop Auckland, the Civil Service in East Africa or the Foreign Office. He was demobilised on 13 June 1919. He retained the rank of captain.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden had dabbled in the study of Turkish with a family friend. After the war, he studied Oriental Languages (Persian and Arabic) at Christ Church, Oxford, starting in October 1919. Persian was his main and Arabic his secondary language. He studied under Richard Paset Dewhurst and David Samuel Margoliouth.


title: Anthony Eden

text: At Oxford, Eden took no part in student politics, and his main leisure interest at the time was art. Eden was in the Oxford University Dramatic Society and President of the Asiatic Society. Along with Lord David Cecil and R. E. Gathorne-Hardy he founded the Uffizi Society, of which he later became president. Possibly under the influence of his father, Eden gave a paper on Paul Cézanne, whose work was not yet widely appreciated. Eden was already collecting paintings.


title: Anthony Eden

text: In July 1920, still an undergraduate, Eden was recalled to military service as a lieutenant in the 6th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry. In the spring of 1921, once again as a temporary captain, he commanded local defence forces at Spennymoor as serious industrial unrest seemed possible. He again relinquished his commission on 8 July. He graduated from Oxford in June 1922 with a Double First. He continued to serve as an officer in the Territorial Army until May 1923.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Captain Eden, as he was still known, was selected to contest Spennymoor, as a Conservative. At first, he had hoped to win with some Liberal support as the Conservatives were still supporting Lloyd George's coalition government, but by the time of the November 1922 general election, it was clear that the surge in the Labour vote made that unlikely. His main sponsor was the Marquess of Londonderry, a local coalowner. The seat went from Liberal to Labour.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden's father had died on 20 February 1915. As a younger son, he had inherited capital of £7,675 and in 1922 he had a private income of £706 after tax (approximately £375,000 and £35,000 at 2014 prices).


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden read the writings of Lord Curzon and was hoping to emulate him by entering politics with a view to specialising in foreign affairs. Eden married Beatrice Beckett in the autumn of 1923, and after a two-day honeymoon in Essex, he was selected to fight Warwick and Leamington for a by-election in November 1923. His Labour opponent, Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, was by coincidence his sister Elfrida's mother-in-law and also mother to his wife's step-mother, Marjorie Blanche Eve Beckett, née Greville. On 16 November 1923, during the by-election campaign, Parliament was dissolved for the December 1923 general election. He was elected to Parliament at the age of twenty-six.


title: Anthony Eden

text: The first Labour Government, under Ramsay MacDonald, took office in January 1924. Eden's maiden speech (19 February 1924) was a controversial attack on Labour's defence policy and was heckled, and he was thereafter careful to speak only after deep preparation. He later reprinted the speech in the collection "Foreign Affairs" (1939) to give an impression that he had been a consistent advocate of air strength. Eden admired H. H. Asquith, then in his final year in the Commons, for his lucidity and brevity. On 1 April 1924, he spoke to urge Anglo-Turkish friendship and the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne, which had been signed in July 1923.


title: Anthony Eden

text: The Conservatives returned to power at the 1924 General Election. In January 1925, Eden, disappointed not to have been offered a position, went on a tour of the Middle East and met Emir Feisal of Iraq. Feisal reminded him of the "Czar of Russia & (I) suspect that his fate may be similar" (a similar fate indeed befell the Iraqi Royal Family in 1958). During a visit to Pahlavi Iran he inspected the Abadan Refinery, which he likened to "a Swansea on a small scale".


title: Anthony Eden

text: He was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Godfrey Locker-Lampson, Under-Secretary at the Home Office (17 February 1925), serving under Home Secretary William Joynson Hicks.


title: Anthony Eden

text: In July 1925, he went on a second trip to Canada, Australia and India. He wrote articles for "The Yorkshire Post", controlled by his father-in-law Sir Gervase Beckett, under the pseudonym "Backbencher". In September 1925, he represented the "Yorkshire Post" at the Imperial Conference at Melbourne.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden continued to be PPS to Locker-Lampson when the latter was appointed Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office in December 1925. He distinguished himself with a speech on the Middle East (21 December 1925), that called for the readjustment of Iraqi frontiers in favour of Turkey but also for a continued British mandate, rather than a "scuttle". Eden ended his speech by calling for Anglo-Turkish friendship. On 23 March 1926, he spoke to urge the League of Nations to admit Germany, which would happen the following year. In July 1926 he became PPS to the Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Besides supplementing his parliamentary income of around £300 a year at that time by writing and journalism, he published a book about his travels, "Places in the Sun" in 1926 that was highly critical of the detrimental effect of socialism on Australia and to which Stanley Baldwin wrote a foreword.


title: Anthony Eden

text: In November 1928, with Austen Chamberlain away on a voyage to recover his health, Eden had to speak for the government in a debate on a recent Anglo-French naval agreement in reply to Ramsay MacDonald, then Leader of the Opposition. According to Austen Chamberlain, he would have been promoted to his first ministerial job, Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, if the Conservatives had won the 1929 election.


title: Anthony Eden

text: The 1929 general election was the only time that Eden received less than 50% of the vote at Warwick. After the Conservative defeat, he joined a progressive group of younger politicians consisting of Oliver Stanley, William Ormsby-Gore and the future Speaker W.S. "Shakes" Morrison. Another member was Noel Skelton, who had before his death coined the phrase "property-owning democracy", which Eden was later to popularise as a Conservative Party aspiration. Eden advocated co-partnership in industry between managers and workers, whom he wanted to be given shares.


title: Anthony Eden

text: In opposition between 1929 and 1931, Eden worked as a City broker for Harry Lucas, a firm that was eventually absorbed into S. G. Warburg & Co.


title: Anthony Eden

text: In August 1931, Eden held his first ministerial office as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's National Government. Initially, the office was held by Lord Reading (in the House of Lords), but Sir John Simon held the position from November 1931.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Like many of his generation who had served in the First World War, Eden was strongly antiwar, and he strove to work through the League of Nations to preserve European peace. The government proposed measures superseding the postwar Versailles Treaty to allow Germany to rearm (albeit replacing its small professional army with a short-service militia) and to reduce French armaments. Winston Churchill criticised the policy sharply in the House of Commons on 23 March 1933, opposing "undue" French disarmament as this might require Britain to take action to enforce peace under the 1925 Locarno Treaty. Eden, replying for the government, dismissed Churchill's speech as exaggerated and unconstructive and commented that land disarmament had yet to make the same progress as naval disarmament at the Washington and London Treaties and arguing that French disarmament was needed to "secure for Europe that period of appeasement which is needed". Eden's speech was met with approval by the House of Commons. Neville Chamberlain commented shortly afterwards, "That young man is coming along rapidly; not only can he make a good speech but he has a good head and what advice he gives is listened to by the Cabinet".


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden later wrote that in the early 1930s, the word "appeasement" was still used in its correct sense (from the "Oxford English Dictionary") of seeking to settle strife. Only later in the decade would it come to acquire a pejorative meaning of acceding to bullying demands.


title: Anthony Eden

text: He was appointed Lord Privy Seal in December 1933, a position that was combined with the newly created office of Minister for League of Nations Affairs. As Lord Privy Seal, Eden was sworn of the Privy Council in the 1934 Birthday Honours.


title: Anthony Eden

text: On 25 March 1935, accompanying Sir John Simon, Eden met Hitler in Berlin and raised a weak protest after Hitler restored conscription against the Versailles Treaty. The same month, Eden also met Stalin and Litvinov in Moscow.


title: Anthony Eden

text: He entered the cabinet for the first time when Stanley Baldwin formed his third administration in June 1935. Eden later came 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 (now called Ethiopia) in 1935. After Hoare resigned after the failure of the Hoare-Laval Pact, Eden succeeded him as Foreign Secretary. When Eden had his first audience with King George V, the King is said to have remarked, "No more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris".


title: Anthony Eden

text: In 1935, Baldwin sent Eden on a two-day visit to see Hitler, with whom he dined twice. Litvinov's biographer John Holroyd-Doveton believed that Eden shares with Molotov the experience of being the only people to have had dinner with Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin although not on the same occasion. Hitler never had dinner with any of the other three leaders, and as far as is known, Stalin never saw Hitler.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Attlee was convinced that public opinion could stop Hitler, saying in a speech in the House of Commons:"We believe in a League system in which the whole world would be ranged against an aggressor. If it is shown that someone is proposing to break the peace let us bring the whole world opinion against her".However, Eden was more realistic and correctly predicted:"Hitler could only be stopped. There may be the only course of action open to us to join with those powers who are members of the League in affirming our faith in that institution and to uphold the principles of the Covenant. It may be the spectacle of the great powers of the League reaffirming their intentions to collaborate more closely than ever is not only the sole means of bringing home to Germany that the inevitable effect of persisting in her present policy will be to consolidate against her all those nations which believe in collective security but will also tend to give confidence to those less powerful nations which through fear of Germany's growing strength might well otherwise be drawn into her orbit".Eden proceeded to Moscow for talks with Stalin and Soviet Minister Litvinov, Most of the British cabinet feared of the spread of Bolshevism to Britain and hated the Soviets, but Eden went with an open mind and had a respect for Stalin:"(Stalin's) personality made itself felt without exaggeration. He had natural good manners, perhaps a Georgian inheritance. Though I knew the man was without mercy, I respected the quality of his mind and even felt a sympathy I have never been able to analyse. Perhaps it was because of the pragmatic approach. I cannot believe he had any affinity to Marx. Certainly no one could have been less doctrinaire".Eden felt sure most of his colleagues would feel unenthusiastic about any favourable report on the Soviet Union but felt certain to be correct.


title: Anthony Eden

text: The representatives of both governments were happy to note that as a result of a full and frank exchange of views, there is at present no conflict of interest between them on any of the major issues of international policy, which provided a firm foundation between them in the cause of peace. Eden stated when he sent the communiqué to his government, he thought that his colleagues would be "Unenthusiastic, I am sure".


title: Anthony Eden

text: John Holroyd-Doveton argued that Eden would be proved right. Not only was the French army defeated by the German army, but France broke its treaty with Britain by seeking an armistice with Germany. In contrast, the Red Army finally defeated the Wehrmacht.


title: Anthony Eden

text: At that stage in his career, Eden was considered as something of a leader of fashion. He regularly wore a Homburg hat, which became known in Britain as an "Anthony Eden".


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden became Foreign Secretary after Samuel Hoare had resigned (→ Hoare–Laval Pact). Britain had to adjust its foreign policy to face the rise of the fascist powers (Nazi Germany / Hitler and Italian fascism / Mussolini). He supported the policy of non-interference in the Spanish Civil War through conferences such as the Nyon Conference and supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his National Government in their efforts to preserve peace through reasonable concessions to Nazi Germany. The Italian-Ethiopian War was brewing, and Eden tried in vain to persuade Mussolini to submit the dispute to the League of Nations. The Italian dictator scoffed at Eden publicly as "the best dressed fool in Europe". Eden did not protest when Britain and France failed to oppose Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland on 7 March 1936. When the French (Sarraut II government) requested a meeting with a view to some kind of military action in response to Hitler's occupation, Eden's statement firmly ruled out any military assistance to France.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden resigned on 20 February 1938 as a public protest against Chamberlain's policy of coming to friendly terms with Fascist Italy. Eden used secret intelligence reports to conclude that the Mussolini regime in Italy posed a threat to Britain.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden still had no complaints about the appeasement of Nazi Germany. He became a Conservative dissenter, leading a group that Conservative whip David Margesson called the "Glamour Boys". Meanwhile, the leading anti-appeaser Winston Churchill led a similar group, "The Old Guard". They were not yet allies and would not see eye-to-eye until Churchill became prime minister in 1940. There was much speculation that Eden would become a rallying point for all the disparate opponents of Chamberlain, but Eden's position declined heavily among politicians since he maintained a low profile and avoided confrontation though he opposed the Munich Agreement and abstained in the vote on it in the House of Commons. However, he remained popular in the country at large and, in later years, was often wrongly supposed to have resigned as Foreign Secretary in protest at the Munich Agreement and appeasement generally. In a 1967 interview, Eden explained his decision to resign: "we had an agreement with Mussolini about the Mediterranean and Spain, which he was violating by sending troops to Spain, and Chamberlain wanted to have another agreement. I thought Mussolini should honour the first one before we negotiated for the second. I was trying to fight a delaying action for Britain, and I could not go along with Chamberlain's policy".


title: Anthony Eden

text: During the last months of peace in 1939, Eden joined the Territorial Army with the rank of major, in the London Rangers motorised battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps and was at annual camp with them in Beaulieu, Hampshire, when he heard news of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Two days after the outbreak of war, on 3 September 1939, Eden, unlike most Territorials, did not mobilise for active service. Instead, he returned to Chamberlain's government as Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs and he visited Palestine in February 1940 to inspect the Second Australian Imperial Force. However, he was not in the War Cabinet. As a result, he was not a candidate for prime minister when Chamberlain resigned on 10 May 1940 after the Narvik Debate and Churchill became prime minister. Churchill appointed Eden Secretary of State for War.


title: Anthony Eden

text: At the end of 1940, Eden returned to the Foreign Office and became a member of the executive committee of the Political Warfare Executive in 1941. Although he was one of Churchill's closest confidants, his role in wartime was restricted because Churchill himself conducted the most important negotiations, those with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, but Eden served loyally as Churchill's lieutenant. In December 1941, he travelled by ship to the Soviet Union where he met the Soviet leader Stalin and surveyed the battlefields upon which the Soviets had successfully defended Moscow from the German Army attack in Operation Barbarossa.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Nevertheless, he was in charge of handling most of the relations between Britain and the Free French leader, Charles de Gaulle, during the last years of the war. Eden was often both critical of the emphasis Churchill put on the special relationship with the United States and disappointed by the American treatment of its British allies.


title: Anthony Eden

text: In 1942, Eden was given the additional role of Leader of the House of Commons. He was considered for various other major jobs during and after the war, including Commander-in-Chief Middle East in 1942 (which would have been a very unusual appointment as Eden was a civilian; General Harold Alexander would be appointed), Viceroy of India in 1943 (General Archibald Wavell was appointed to this job) or Secretary-General of the newly formed United Nations Organisation in 1945. In 1943, with the revelation of the Katyn massacre, Eden refused to help the Polish Government in Exile. Eden supported the idea of postwar expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia.


title: Anthony Eden

text: In early 1943, Eden blocked a request from the Bulgarian authorities to aid with deporting part of the Jewish population from newly acquired Bulgarian territories to British-controlled Palestine. After his refusal, some of the people were transported to Treblinka extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.


title: Anthony Eden

text: In 1944, Eden went to Moscow to negotiate with the Soviet Union at the Tolstoy Conference. Eden also opposed the Morgenthau Plan to deindustrialise Germany. After the Stalag Luft III murders, he vowed in the House of Commons to bring the perpetrators of the crime to "exemplary justice", which led to a successful manhunt after the war by the Royal Air Force's Special Investigation Branch. During the Yalta Conference (February 1945) he pressed the Soviet Union and the United States to allow France a zone of occupation in postwar Germany.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden's eldest son, Pilot officer Simon Gascoigne Eden, went missing in action and was later declared dead; he was serving as a navigator with the Royal Air Force in Burma in June 1945. There was a close bond between Eden and Simon, and Simon's death was a great personal shock to his father. Mrs Eden reportedly reacted to the loss of her son differently, which led to a breakdown in the marriage. De Gaulle wrote him a personal letter of condolence in French.


title: Anthony Eden

text: In 1945, he was mentioned by Halvdan Koht among seven candidates who were qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, he did not explicitly nominate any of them. The person who was actually nominated was Cordell Hull.


title: Anthony Eden

text: After the Labour Party won the 1945 election, Eden went into opposition as Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party. Many felt that Churchill should have retired and allowed Eden to become party leader, but Churchill refused to consider the idea. As early as the spring of 1946, Eden openly asked Churchill to retire in his favour. He was in any case depressed by the end of his first marriage and the death of his eldest son. Churchill was, in many ways, only "part-time Leader of the Opposition" because of his many journeys abroad and his literary work, and left the day-to-day work largely to Eden, who was largely regarded as lacking a sense of party politics and contact with the common man. In the opposition years, however, he developed some knowledge about domestic affairs and created the idea of a "property-owning-democracy", which Margaret Thatcher's government attempted to achieve decades later. His domestic agenda is overall considered to be centre-left.


title: Anthony Eden

text: In 1951 the Conservatives returned to office and Eden became Foreign Secretary for a third time. Churchill was largely a figurehead in the government, and Eden had effective control of British foreign policy for the second time, with the decline of the empire and the intensifying of the Cold War. Churchill wanted to appoint Eden Deputy Prime Minister as well as Foreign Secretary, but the King objected and said that the office did not exist in the UK constitution and might interfere with his ability to appoint a successor. Thus, Eden was not appointed Deputy Prime Minister. However, he still considered himself Churchill's "second-in-command" and had been regarded as Churchill's "crown prince" since 1942.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden's biographer Richard Lamb said that Eden bullied Churchill into going back on commitments to European unity made in opposition. The truth appears to be more complex. Britain was still a world power or at least trying to be one in 1945–55, with the concept of sovereignty not as discredited as on the Continent. The United States encouraged moves towards European federalism so that it could withdraw troops and have the Germans rearmed under supervision. Eden was less Atlanticist than Churchill and had little time for European federalism. He wanted firm alliances with France and other Western European powers to contain Germany. Half of British trade was then with the sterling area and only a quarter with Western Europe. Despite later talk of "lost opportunities", even Macmillan, who had been an active member of the European Movement after the war, acknowledged in February 1952 that Britain's special relationship with the United States and the Commonwealth would prevent it from joining a federal Europe at the time. Eden was also irritated by Churchill's hankering for a summit meeting with the Soviet Union in 1953 after Stalin's death. Eden became seriously ill from a series of botched bile duct operations in April 1953 that nearly killed him. After that, he had frequent bouts of poor physical health and psychological depression.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Despite the ending of the British Raj in India, British interest in the Middle East remained strong. Britain had treaty relations with Jordan and Iraq and was the protecting power for Kuwait and the Trucial States, the colonial power in Aden, and the occupying power in the Suez Canal. Many right-wing Conservative MPs, organised in the so-called "Suez Group", sought to retain the imperial role, but economic pressures made maintenance of it increasingly difficult. Britain sought to maintain its huge military base in the Suez Canal zone and, in the face of Egyptian resentment, to further develop its alliance with Iraq, and the hope was that the Americans would assist Britain, possibly by finance. While the Americans co-operated with the British in the 28 Mordad coup against the Mosaddegh government in Iran after it had nationalised British oil interests, the Americans developed their own relations in the region and took a positive view of the Egyptian Free Officers and developed friendly relations with Saudi Arabia. Britain was eventually forced to withdraw from the canal zone, and the Baghdad Pact security treaty was not supported by the United States, which left Eden vulnerable to the charge of having failed to maintain British prestige.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden had grave misgivings about American foreign policy under Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. As early as March 1953, Eisenhower was concerned at the escalating costs of defence and the increase of state power that it would bring. Eden was irked by Dulles's policy of "brinkmanship", the display of muscle, in relations with the communist world. In particular, both had heated exchanges with one another regarding the proposed American aerial strike operation ("Vulture") to try to save the beleaguered French Union garrison at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in early 1954. The operation was cancelled, in part, because of Eden's refusal to commit to it for fear of Chinese intervention and ultimately a third world war. Dulles then walked out early in the Geneva Conference talks and was critical of the American decision not to sign it. Nevertheless, the success of the conference ranked as the outstanding achievement of Eden's third term in the Foreign Office. During the summer and fall of 1954, the Anglo-Egyptian agreement to withdraw all British forces from Egypt was also negotiated and ratified.


title: Anthony Eden

text: There were concerns that if the European Defence Community was not ratified as it wanted, the United States might withdraw into defending only the Western Hemisphere, but recent documentary evidence confirms that the US intended to withdraw troops from Europe anyway even if the EDC was ratified. After the French National Assembly rejected the EDC in August 1954, Eden tried to come up with a viable alternative. Between 11 and 17 September, he visited every major West European capital to negotiate West Germany becoming a sovereign state and entering the Western European Union prior to it entering NATO. Paul-Henri Spaak said that Eden "saved the Atlantic alliance".


title: Anthony Eden

text: In April 1955 Churchill retired, and Eden succeeded him as prime minister. He was a very popular figure as a result of his long wartime service and his famous good looks and charm. His famous words "Peace comes first, always" added to his already substantial popularity.


title: Anthony Eden

text: On taking office, he immediately called a general election for 26 May 1955, at which he increased the Conservative majority from seventeen to sixty, an increase in majority that broke a ninety-year record for any UK government. The 1955 general election was the last in which the Conservatives won the majority share of the votes in Scotland. However, Eden had never held a domestic portfolio and had little experience in economic matters. He left these areas to his lieutenants such as Rab Butler, and concentrated largely on foreign policy, forming a close relationship with US President Dwight Eisenhower. Eden's attempts to maintain overall control of the Foreign Office drew widespread criticism.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden has the distinction of being the British prime minister to oversee the lowest unemployment figures of the post-World War II era, with unemployment standing at just over 215,000—barely one per cent of the workforce—in July 1955.


title: Anthony Eden

text: The alliance with the US proved not universal, however, when in July 1956 Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt, nationalised the Suez Canal, following the withdrawal of Anglo-American funding for the Aswan Dam. Eden believed the nationalisation was in violation of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1954 that Nasser had signed with the British and French governments on 19 October 1954. This view was shared by Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell and Liberal leader Jo Grimond. In 1956 the Suez Canal was of vital importance since over two-thirds of the oil supplies of Western Europe (60 million tons annually) passed through it, with 15,000 ships a year, one-third of them British; three-quarters of all Canal shipping belonged to NATO countries. Britain's total oil reserve at the time of the nationalisation was enough for only six weeks. The Soviet Union was certain to veto any sanctions against Nasser at the United Nations. Britain and a conference of other nations met in London following the nationalisation in an attempt to resolve the crisis through diplomatic means. However, the Eighteen Nations Proposals, including an offer of Egyptian representation on the board of the Suez Canal Company and a share of profits, were rejected by Nasser. Eden feared that Nasser intended to form an Arab Alliance that would threaten to cut off oil supplies to Europe and, in conjunction with France, decided he should be removed from power.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Most people believed that Nasser was acting from legitimate patriotic concerns and the nationalisation was determined by the Foreign Office to be deliberately provocative but not illegal. The Attorney General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, was not asked for his opinion officially but made his view, that the government's contemplated armed strike against Egypt would be unlawful, known through the Lord Chancellor.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Anthony Nutting recalled that Eden told him, "What's all this nonsense about isolating Nasser or 'neutralising' him as you call it? I want him destroyed, can't you understand? I want him murdered, and if you and the Foreign Office don't agree, then you'd better come to the cabinet and explain why." When Nutting pointed out that they had no alternative government to replace Nasser, Eden apparently replied, "I don't give a damn if there's anarchy and chaos in Egypt." At a private meeting at Downing Street on 16 October 1956 Eden showed several ministers a plan, submitted two days earlier by the French. Israel would invade Egypt, Britain and France would give an ultimatum telling both sides to stop and, when one refused, send in forces to enforce the ultimatum, separate the two sides – and occupy the Canal and get rid of Nasser. When Nutting suggested the Americans should be consulted Eden replied, "I will not bring the Americans into this ... Dulles has done enough damage as it is. This has nothing to do with the Americans. We and the French must decide what to do and we alone." Eden openly admitted his view of the crisis was shaped by his experiences in the two world wars, writing, "We are all marked to some extent by the stamp of our generation, mine is that of the assassination in Sarajevo and all that flowed from it. It is impossible to read the record now and not feel that we had a responsibility for always being a lap behind ... Always a lap behind, a fatal lap."


title: Anthony Eden

text: There was no question of the pathway to an immediate military response to the crisis – Cyprus had no deep-water harbours, which meant that Malta, several days' sailing from Egypt, would have to be the main concentration point for an invasion fleet if the Libyan government would not permit a land invasion from its territory. Eden initially considered using British forces in the Kingdom of Libya to regain the Canal, but then decided this risked inflaming Arab opinion. Unlike the French prime minister Guy Mollet, who saw regaining the Canal as the primary objective, Eden believed the real need was to remove Nasser from office. He hoped that if the Egyptian army was swiftly and humiliatingly defeated by the Anglo-French forces the Egyptian people would rise up against Nasser. Eden told Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery that the overall aim of the mission was simply, "To knock Nasser off his perch." In the absence of a popular uprising Eden and Mollet would say that Egyptian forces were incapable of defending their country and therefore Anglo-French forces would have to return to guard the Suez Canal.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden believed that if Nasser were seen to get away with seizing the Canal then Egypt and other Arab countries might move closer to the Soviet Union. At that time, the Middle East accounted for 80–90 percent of Western Europe's oil supply. Other Middle East countries might also be encouraged to nationalise their oil industries. The invasion, he contended at the time, and again in a 1967 interview, was aimed at maintaining the sanctity of international agreements and at preventing future unilateral denunciation of treaties. Eden was energetic during the crisis in using the media, including the BBC, to incite public opinion to support his views of the need to overthrow Nasser. In September 1956 a plan was drawn up to reduce the flow of water in the Nile by using dams in an attempt to damage Nasser's position. However, the plan was abandoned because it would take months to implement, and due to fears that it could affect other countries such as Uganda and Kenya.


title: Anthony Eden

text: On 25 September 1956, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan met informally with President Eisenhower at the White House; he misread Eisenhower's determination to avoid war and told Eden that the Americans would not in any way oppose the attempt to topple Nasser. Though Eden had known Eisenhower for years and had many direct contacts during the crisis, he also misread the situation. The Americans saw themselves as the champion of decolonisation and refused to support any move that could be seen as imperialism or colonialism. Eisenhower felt the crisis had to be handled peacefully; he told Eden that American public opinion would not support a military solution. Eden and other leading British officials incorrectly believed Nasser's support for Palestinian militia against Israel, as well as his attempts to destabilise pro-western regimes in Iraq and other Arab states, would deter the US from intervening with the operation. Eisenhower specifically warned that the Americans, and the world, "would be outraged" unless all peaceful routes had been exhausted, and even then "the eventual price might become far too heavy". At the root of the problem was the fact that Eden felt that Britain was still an independent world power. His lack of sympathy for British integration into Europe, manifested in his scepticism about the fledgling European Economic Community (EEC), was another aspect of his belief in Britain's independent role in world affairs.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Israel invaded the Sinai peninsula at the end of October 1956. Britain and France moved in ostensibly to separate the two sides and bring peace, but in fact to regain control of the canal and overthrow Nasser. The United States immediately and strongly opposed the invasion. The United Nations denounced the invasion, the Soviets were bellicose, and only New Zealand, Australia, West Germany and South Africa spoke out for Britain's position.


title: Anthony Eden

text: The Suez Canal was of lesser economic importance to the US, which acquired only 15 percent of its oil through that route (compared to well over half of the total oil supply to the UK) at the time. Eisenhower wanted to broker international peace in "fragile" regions. He did not see Nasser as a serious threat to the West, but he was concerned that the Soviets, who were well known to want a permanent warm water base for their Black Sea Fleet in the Mediterranean, might side with Egypt. Eisenhower feared a pro-Soviet backlash amongst the Arab nations if, as seemed likely, Egypt suffered an humiliating defeat at the hands of the British, French and Israelis.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden, who faced domestic pressure from his party to take action, as well as stopping the decline of British influence in the Middle East, had ignored Britain's financial dependence on the US in the wake of the Second World War, and had assumed the US would automatically endorse whatever action taken by its closest ally. At the 'Law not War' rally in Trafalgar Square on 4 November 1956, Eden was ridiculed by Aneurin Bevan: "Sir Anthony Eden has been pretending that he is now invading Egypt to strengthen the United Nations. Every burglar of course could say the same thing; he could argue that he was entering the house to train the police. So, if Sir Anthony Eden is sincere in what he is saying, and he may be, then he is too "stupid" to be a prime minister". Public opinion was mixed; some historians think that the majority of public opinion in the UK was on Eden's side. Eden was forced to bow to American diplomatic and financial pressure, and protests at home, by calling a ceasefire when Anglo-French forces had captured only 23 miles of the Canal. With the US threatening to withdraw its financial support for the pound sterling, the cabinet divided and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan threatening to resign unless an immediate ceasefire was called, Eden was under immense pressure. He considered defying the calls until the commander on the ground told him it could take up to six days for the Anglo-French troops to secure the entire Canal zone. Therefore, a ceasefire was called at quarter past midnight on 7 November.


title: Anthony Eden

text: In his 1987 book "Spycatcher" Peter Wright said that, following the imposed ending to the military operation, Eden reactivated the assassination option for a second time. By this time virtually all MI6 agents in Egypt had been rounded up by Nasser, and a new operation, using renegade Egyptian officers, was drawn up. It failed principally because the cache of weapons which had been hidden on the outskirts of Cairo was found to be defective.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Suez badly damaged Eden's reputation for statesmanship, and led to a breakdown in his health. He went on vacation to Jamaica in November 1956, at a time when he was still determined to soldier on as prime minister. His health, however, did not improve, and during his absence from London his Chancellor Harold Macmillan and Rab Butler worked to manoeuvre him out of office. On the morning of the ceasefire Eisenhower agreed to meet with Eden to publicly resolve their differences, but this offer was later withdrawn after Secretary of State Dulles advised that it could inflame the Middle Eastern situation further.


title: Anthony Eden

text: "The Observer" newspaper accused Eden of lying to Parliament over the Suez Crisis, while MPs from all parties criticised his calling a ceasefire before the Canal was taken. Churchill, while publicly supportive of Eden's actions, privately criticised his successor for not seeing the military operation through to its conclusion. Eden easily survived a vote of confidence in the House of Commons on 8 November.


title: Anthony Eden

text: While Eden was on holiday in Goldeneye Estate in Oracabessa Bay in Jamaica, other members of the government discussed on 20 November how to counter charges that the UK and France had worked in collusion with Israel to seize the Canal, but decided there was very little evidence in the public domain.


title: Anthony Eden

text: On his return from Jamaica on 14 December, Eden still hoped to continue as prime minister. He had lost his traditional base of support on the Tory left and amongst moderate opinion nationally, but appears to have hoped to rebuild a new base of support amongst the Tory Right. However, his political position had eroded during his absence. He wished to make a statement attacking Nasser as a puppet of the Soviets, attacking the United Nations and speaking of the "lessons of the 1930s", but was prevented from doing so by Macmillan, Butler and Lord Salisbury.


title: Anthony Eden

text: On his return to the House of Commons (17 December), he slipped into the Chamber largely unacknowledged by his own party. One Conservative MP rose to wave his Order Paper, only to have to sit down in embarrassment whilst Labour MPs laughed. On 18 December he addressed the 1922 committee (Conservative backbenchers), declaring "as long as I live, I shall never apologise for what we did", but was unable to answer a question about the validity of the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 (which he had in fact reaffirmed in April 1955, two days before becoming Prime Minister). In his final statement to the House of Commons as prime minister (20 December 1956), he performed well in a difficult debate, but told MPs that "there was not foreknowledge that Israel would attack Egypt". Victor Rothwell writes that the knowledge of his having misled the House of Commons in this way must have hung over him thereafter, as was the concern that the US Administration might demand that Britain pay reparations to Egypt. Papers released in January 1987 showed the entire cabinet had been informed of the plan on 23 October 1956.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden suffered another fever at Chequers over Christmas, but was still talking of going on an official trip to the USSR in April 1957, wanting a full inquiry into the Crabb affair and badgering Lord Hailsham (First Lord of the Admiralty) about the £6m being spent on oil storage at Malta.


title: Anthony Eden

text: Eden resigned on 9 January 1957, after his doctors warned him his life was at stake if he continued in office. John Charmley writes "Ill-health ... provide(d) a dignified reason for an action (i.e.. resignation) which would, in any event, have been necessary." Rothwell writes that "mystery persists" over exactly how Eden was persuaded to resign, although the limited evidence suggests that Butler, who was expected to succeed him as prime minister, was at the centre of the intrigue. Rothwell writes that Eden's fevers were "nasty but brief and not life-threatening" and that there may have been "manipulation of medical evidence" to make Eden's health seem "even worse" than it was. Macmillan wrote in his diary that "nature had provided a real health reason" when a "diplomatic illness" might otherwise have had to be invented. David Carlton (1981) even suggested that the Palace might have been involved, a suggestion discussed by Rothwell. As early as spring 1954 Eden had been indifferent to cultivating good relations with the new Queen. Eden is known to have favoured a Japanese or Scandinavian style monarchy (i.e. with no involvement in politics whatsoever) and in January 1956 he had insisted that Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin spend only the minimum amount of time in talks with the Queen. Evidence also exists that the Palace was concerned at not being kept fully informed during the Suez Crisis. In the 1960s, Clarissa Eden was observed to speak of the Queen "in an extremely hostile and belittling way", and in an interview in 1976, Eden commented that he "would not claim she was pro-Suez".


title: Anthony Eden

text: Although the media expected Butler would get the nod as Eden's successor, a survey of the cabinet taken for the Queen showed Macmillan was the nearly unanimous choice, and he became prime minister on 10 January 1957. Shortly afterwards Eden and his wife left England for a holiday in New Zealand.


title: Anthony Eden

text: A. J. P. Taylor wrote in the 1970s: "Eden … destroyed (his reputation as a peacemaker) and led Great Britain to one of the greatest humiliations in her history … (he) seemed to take on a new personality. He acted impatiently and on impulse. Previously flexible he now relied on dogma, denouncing Nasser as a second Hitler. Though he claimed to be upholding international law, he in fact disregarded the United Nations Organisation which he had helped to create...The outcome was pathetic rather than tragic".


title: Anthony Eden

text: Biographer D. R. Thorpe says Eden's four goals were to secure the canal; to make sure it remained open and that oil shipments would continue; to depose Nasser; and to prevent the USSR from gaining influence. "The immediate consequence of the crisis was that the Suez Canal was blocked, oil supplies were interrupted, Nasser's position as the leader of Arab nationalism was strengthened, and the way was left open for Russian intrusion into the Middle East.