No charge for Four Arts members
Book signing to follow
Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon (1920-2021) was the niece of one Prime Minister – Sir Winston Churchill, and the wife of another – Anthony Eden. She famously said: ‘For the past few weeks I have really felt as if the Suez Canal was flowing through my drawing-room.’ At Oxford in the 1940s she fascinated dons and undergraduates alike. Distant and dismissive, she was beautiful and well-connected. With her impressive intellect and acerbic wit, she was an influential muse to many leading figures over several decades – Cecil Beaton, James Pope-Hennessy, Lucian Freud, Isaiah Berlin, and Lord Goodman. After an early Bohemian life, she became a politically active wife to Eden when he was Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, particularly during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Biographer and broadcaster, Hugo Vickers will bring context to her life through his book, Clarissa Muse to Power and from personal stories of their 40-year friendship.