Volume 34, Number 16 · October 22, 1987
The Next Best Man
By David Cannadine
Anthony Eden
by Robert Rhodes James
McGraw-Hill, 665 pp., $22.95
On April 4, 1955, Sir Winston Churchill gave a dinner at 10 Downing Street on the eve of his retirement as prime minister. For him, it was the definitive end to an Olympian career. For Sir Anthony Eden, his heir apparent, his long-awaited promised land was now finally in sight. Yet although Churchill claimed that 'no two men have ever changed guard more smoothly,' relations between them had recently been strained almost to breaking point. Eden had been so enraged by Churchill's procrastination and obstructiveness that he had sometimes come to hate the man he most admired. And Churchill was so distressed by Eden's hunger for power and hostility to his policies that he had even come to doubt the fitness of his own protégé for his job. At the end of the evening, when all the guests had departed, the prime minister turned to his private secretary, John Colville, and observed with vehemence, 'I don't believe Anthony can do it.'
Review, 4089 words
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