PREFACE
f i ^o write the biography of a living man is to invite ridicule
JL and even obloquy, but for attempting to summarize and
interpret some of the principal facts and factors in the first
forty-three years of Anthony Eden's career there is perhaps
more than the customary excuse. The astonishing thing is
that although by early middle age his name is a household
word, the story of how he stormed the heights of world
renown is almost entirely unknown. It is tucked away in
the endless columns of Hansard and the dusty files of local
newspapers.
Anthony Eden arrived on the world scene with the
emergence of the National Government. He has been
there ever since, but of his antecedents no questions were
asked. The public did not demand a reference. Instead,
finding him politically sincere, physically attractive and
socially beyond reproach, it conferred on him a testimonial
from its own immediate impressions. Whereas Adolf
Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin have had to
use all the resources of their respective states to build up
legends about themselves, the legend of Anthony Eden is a
thing at once as simple and mysterious as a classic fairy story.
But Eden's period of power already belongs to history.
Alternative forces and fresh facts have already swept away
much of his work. Yet he symbolizes still an aspiration in
international government and method which the peoples of
Great Britain and the world at large cannot finally avoid.
He is still the greatest threat to the forces of reaction in
this country. And the signs are that the remaining years of
Anthony Eden's allotted span will see the causes he cham-
pioned taken up with renewed zeal. This book has been
written under the shadow of recurring crises, culminating
in the reprieve of Munich. Spokesmen of all parties and
persuasions are agreed that the four statesmen who met at