ABSTRACT
Anthony Eden was just thirty-eight when he took charge of the Foreign Office at the end of 1935, but he was in many ways better prepared to carry out the job than any of his recent predecessors. He had served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Austen Chamberlain during the 1920s, speaking on foreign affairs in the House of Commons and attending League meetings at Geneva,1 before subsequently serving as the Junior Minister at the Foreign Office in the National Government that came to power in 1931. Eden’s involvement in the Disarmament Conference during the years that followed made him one of the most prominent faces of British foreign policy abroad, and by the time he entered the Cabinet as Minister for League Affairs in 1935 he had also established a strong domestic reputation for his grasp of international politics. As a result, his appointment in place of Samuel Hoare just a few months later came as no great surprise, although The Times predicted that Austen Chamberlain was the most likely candidate.2 Baldwin himself had made it clear some years before that he regarded Eden as a ‘potential Foreign Secretary’, although in the event he seemed decidedly unenthusiastic when it came to appointing him to the job, noting somewhat ungraciously that since Chamberlain was too old for the post ‘it looks as if it will have to be you’.3 The new Foreign Secretary never entirely forgave the Prime Minister for taking such an offhand approach to his appointment.
