The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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the War
had ended. A policy that he supported and carried out when he became
the Foreign Secretary. Despite the fact
that he was an aristocrat, and thus prima
facie a traditionalist, he was viewed by his colleagues, and
others, as having
shown remarkable flexibility and realism. Nevertheless, Douglas-Home believed
that
Britain must consolidate her power and security between Russia and the
United States, as he thought that the
American nuclear umbrella was not reliable.
He was very much in favour of a strong Commonwealth link.

Eden. R. Anthony Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1940-45; 1951-
55) and Prime
Minister (1955-57).

A few
months after having finished his studies at Oxford in 1922, Anthony
Eden unsuccessfully stood as Conservative
candidate for a mining seat near his
home in Durbam. Two years later he was elected for Warwick and
Leamington,
which he represented in Parliament for the next thirty-three years. However,
before he went
to Oxford, Eden had already served as the adjutant of his battalion,
when he was nineteen and at the age of
twenty became a brigade major. Before
he was forty Eden was already a national hero. He became Foreign
Secretary at
the end of 1935 when he was thirty-eight, the youngest man to occupy such a
position in
politics since Rosebery. For twenty-five years Eden was felt to
represent the biggest common denominator of
British political conviction on the
greatest international issues. Eden was considered, with reason, to be a
man who
like Baldwin was capable of seeing the good points of his appointments, and
putting country
before party (which was how Baldwin was regarded in pre-war
days). Differences of opinion with Neville
Chamberlain (who by then had
followed Baldwin as Prime Minister), a little over two years later, about
the
conduct of foreign policy, especially in relation to Italy, culminated in his
resignation; but this
enhanced his reputation as a man of principle and integrity.
This was also reflected over his conduct of
foreign policy during the Suez crisis,

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