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least one of his [Avon’s] close colleagues’ that he had not told the Queen the whole story
of the Anglo–French–Israeli negotiations leading up to the Sèvres Treaty and had done
so only after the event. Eden’s comment was that Mountbatten, Lacey’s source, was ‘gaga
[and] a congenital liar’.
The truth is that attitudes at the Palace had reflected the confusion and dismay felt by
the nation at large. In the Queen’s Private Office Sir Michael Adeane was in favour of
armed intervention, while the Deputy and Assistant Private Secretaries, Martin Charteris
and Edward Ford, were against it. Both Charteris and Ford were familiar with the
Middle East and the Arab world; Charteris in particular having been head of military
intelligence in Palestine in 1946, while Ford had had the doubtful honour of acting as
tutor to Prince Farouk of Egypt and had fought in the North African campaign. Neither
of them could view with equanimity the prospect of alienating the entire Arab world, as
would inevitably result due to Britain’s attacking the recently resurgent Arab
nationalism symbolized by Nasser’s Egypt in conjunction with the Israelis less than a
decade after the Arab–Israeli war of 1948. Britain’s oil interests lay with the Arabs,
particularly Iraq, where the instability following Suez soon led to the overthrow of the
pro-Western royal government. Then there was Mountbatten, who, in the words of one
of the household, was ‘always about’ at the Palace. He had been involved in the
operation as one of the Chiefs of Staff, but was increasingly unhappy about it; he wrote
two letters to Eden telling him so, one as early as August, although he never sent them.
While he may not have had the courage to tell the Prime Minister that he thought he
was wrong for fear of losing his job, he would have had no such inhibitions about letting
Elizabeth and Philip know. According to one of the people close to her at the time, her
private view of the Suez operation was that it was ‘idiotic’.
It is highly unlikely that Eden actually told the Queen in advance about Britain’s
conspiracy with France and Israel over the attack on Egypt. Only Selwyn Lloyd, the
Foreign Secretary, and two British representatives who actually signed the document
were in on the secret of the Treaty (or Protocol) of Sèvres, and it was agreed at the time
that there would be total official secrecy between the parties as to what had been agreed
not only then but permanently. Eden did not reveal its existence to his Cabinet. Given
the divergence of opinion among her own advisers and the lack of information which
would have illustrated the risks Eden was actually taking, it is understandable that
Elizabeth should have felt unable to exercise her constitutional right ‘to advise, counsel
and warn’. ‘Being so inexperienced, the Queen probably didn’t – which she would have
nowadays – ask him if he had consulted the Commonwealth Prime Ministers first,’ an
aide said; ‘as a result they all sided against Britain at the UN.’
Eden found her perfectly correct and in his utter public isolation at the end he also
found her kind. According to his biographer, of all the letters which he received on his
resignation, none meant more to him than a handwritten letter from the Queen.
Tactfully she did not mention Suez, only her sadness at his resignation and his illness
which was the cause of it:
You know already how very deeply I felt your resignation last week, and how much I sympathize in the