Eden, Robert Anthony, born 11-06-1897 in Windlestone, Durham,
into a very conservative landed gentry family. He was the third of four sons of Sir William Eden
, 7th and 5th Baronet, a former colonel and local magistrate from an old titled family. His mother was Sybil Frances Grey
and together, they were the parents of five children, three brothers and one sister
Elfrida Margorie , John “Jack” Eden (1888–1914), who was killed in action in 1914. Sir Timothy Calvert Eden, 8th and 6th Baronet (1893–1963), a handsome but ill-tempered man who Rab Butler called a “half mad baronet, half beautiful woman”. The third brother was Nicholas William Eden (1900–1916), who was killed when the battlecruiser HMS Indefatigable blew up and sank at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. He was just sixteen years old and the vivid memory of being told of his death stayed with his brother Anthony for many years. Sir William himself, an eccentric and often foul-tempered man, was a talented watercolourist, portraitist and collector of Impressionists. Eden was educated at two independent schools. He attended Sandroyd School in Cobham from 1907 to 1910, where he excelled in languages. He then started at Eton College in January 1911. There, he won a Divinity prize and excelled at cricket, rugby and rowing, winning House colours in the last.





During the First World War, Robert Eden served with the 21st Battalion of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps
and reached the rank of captain. He received a Military Cross
, and at the age of twenty-one became the youngest brigade-major in the British Army
. Like many aspirant politicians Captain Eden, as he was still known, first contested a seat where he had little chance of winning in the November 1922 general election, and was then elected Member of Parliament for Warwick and Leamington in the December 1923 general election, as a Conservative, at the age of twenty-six. Also in that year he married Maude Beatrice Beckett.






















Death and burial ground of Eden, Robert Anthony.






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