Beatrice Beckett

Beatrice Helen Beckett (27 July 1905 – 29 June 1957) was the first wife of the British statesman Anthony Eden.

She was the third daughter of Sir William Gervase Beckett, Bt. (1866–1937), a banker, Conservative MP, and chairman of the Yorkshire Post, and his wife, the Hon. Mabel Theresa Duncombe (1877–1913). She was a relation of Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick.

In 1923, Beckett married Anthony Eden, a rising young Conservative politician, during a lull in his first election campaign. Their honeymoon was cut short after two days so her husband could campaign in Warwick. Soon afterwards her husband entered Parliament thanks to the voters of Warwick and Leamington.

The couple had three sons:

Although Beckett's family press connections provided a useful boost to her husband's political career, by the early 1930s their marriage was in trouble due to Beckett's loathing of politics, and Eden's long hours and frequent absences at work. Eden eventually realised that his wife was having affairs with other men, but suppressed his distress to negotiate an accommodation with her, by which the two agreed to lead largely separate lives in private, "maintaining the fabric of their marriage until the strain became intolerable."

Beckett's separation from Eden increased from 1941, when the family moved to Binderton House, near Chichester, Sussex, while Eden, to meet his wartime responsibilities, lived in a flat in the Foreign Office. The marriage was dealt its 'final blow' when the couple's eldest son, Pilot Officer Simon Gascoigne Eden, predeceased his parents after being reported missing in action in Burma, in June 1945. Beckett spent the rest of the war in Paris, and in 1946 left Eden to live in the United States.