Eden
Compared to Churchill, Eden was stiff and formal, and there was no easy rapport between him and his monarch. Yet after his retirement he wrote fawning letters to her on how he had so looked forward to his weekly audiences, ‘knowing that I should receive from Your Majesty a wise and impartial reaction to events, which was quite simply the voice of our land’.
Broken by illness and politically crucified by the disastrous Suez military adventure of 1956, Eden lasted only two years. His going, unlike his coming, put the Queen in a dilemma, as there were two strong contenders within his Party with equal claim to succeed him, Rab Butler and Harold Macmillan. The issue was clouded by the fact that, at that time, the Tory Party had no proper mechanism for choosing a new leader, and believed that the choice should lie with the Queen rather than themselves. The Queen, for her part, was highly nervous of making such a political decision, particularly as Eden had declined to offer formal advice on a successor.
Two Tory grandees, Lords Salisbury and Kilmuir, were instructed by the Palace to canvass opinion within the party and report back. The lisping Salisbury put the question to each Cabinet minister in turn: ‘Is it Wab or Hawold?’ Within two hours of their conveying the result of their soundings to the Palace, Macmillan was Prime Minister and Butler a deeply disappointed and bitter man. Once again the Queen had effectively chosen not to exercise the Royal Prerogative, unlike her grandfather George V who, faced with a choice between Stanley Baldwin or Lord Curzon, boldly and unexpectedly chose the former.
