Eden

"D R Thorpe is a good example of something that British writers are good at, which is writing the story of history and the story of their times through the lives of particular individuals. I think we have got a string of authors now who are really producing very good work and I would include myself in that category. I thoroughly enjoyed writing the life of Peel and I am now enjoying writing the life of Disraeli and trying to make them palatable and interesting to people who don’t study history. Yes it is. And with this book, Eden, it is a straightforward biography. It doesn’t gloss over the bad sides of him as a person. Eden had a bad temper and he was vain. But he was also an extremely skilful diplomat. He was Foreign Secretary when I joined the Foreign Service in 1952 and we admired him very much. He knew about negotiation. He knew how to get the best out of a situation and then in the end, of course, he became Prime Minister and he threw it all away. He made a mess of the Suez affair. All that is very fairly dealt with in Thorpe’s book. It is indeed strange. He was ill much of the time and he just lost his balance. He started comparing the Egyptian President Nasser, who had nationalised the Suez Canal, to Hitler and Mussolini which was really absurd. He lost his balance, became ill and had to resign. I think you have to keep your balance. I put that very high. You have to be prepared to listen. A Foreign Secretary finds himself meeting some very disagreeable people. That is part of his job. And he has to put up with that and he has to listen carefully and know what he is talking about. He has to master his brief. If he has got those qualities it is a marvellous job. Yes, that is what it is all about. The job is twofold. First of all you need to keep the interests of Britain at the centre of your life and, secondly, to try and help to create a slightly more decent world. I think they are a pity. Not because they are disaster. They are not a disaster. Most of the leaks are about purely trivial things. And they don’t really matter a damn. But they are undermining the trust with which people talk to each other. And that in the end is a bad thing."