Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon - Widowhood

Widowhood

After her husband's death, Lady Avon received many tributes to her devoted care in the later stages of his life. She moved to an apartment in London in the 1980s. She invited firstly Robert Rhodes James and later D. R. Thorpe to write official biographies of her husband. Published in 1986 and 2003 respectively, both offered a broadly sympathic view of Eden’s career and were generally well received by critics. Between them they did much to help restore Eden’s reputation, which had taken such a battering during the final months of his premiership. In 2003 a research study by a Harvard clinician of Eden's medical condition and surgery during the 1950s was published in the USA with an acknowledgement of Lady Avon's interest and cooperation.

Over the years Lady Avon attended various state occasions, as well as gatherings of former Prime Ministers and their families. For example, in 1972 (while her husband was still alive) she described to Cecil Beaton the Duchess of Windsor's "very strange" and nervous demeanour – "Is this my seat?" "Is this my prayer book?" "What do I do now?" – at the funeral of her husband, the former King Edward VIII, while thirty years later Tony Blair's press secretary Alastair Campbell noted that, at a dinner at 10 Downing Street in 2002 to mark Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee, attended by five Prime Ministers and several relatives of deceased Prime Ministers:

Prince Philip was deep in conversation with T B, the Countess of Avon, Macmillan's and Douglas-Home's families, and there was lots of reminiscing about life in Number 10.

In 1994, 17 years after her husband's death, Lady Avon unveiled a bust of Eden at the Foreign Office.