"[e]xquisite small vase of crimson glory buds & mignonette from beloved C[larissa]." When Eden was taken mortally ill with liver cancer, he and Lady Avon had just spent their final Christmas together at Hobe Sound, Florida, as guests of former New York governor W. Averell Harriman, an elder statesman of the Democratic Party, and his English-born wife Pamela. (Mrs Harriman was Lady Avon's exact contemporary, a débutante of 1938 who had also taken a room at the Dorchester during the Second World War. She had previously been married to Lady Avon's cousin Randolph Churchill and in the 1990s was US president Bill Clinton's ambassador to Paris, where she died in 1997.) The Avons were flown back to Britain in a Royal Air Force VC-10 that was diverted to Miami after Prime Minister James Callaghan had been alerted to his health situation by Pamela Harriman's son, Winston. Widowhood After her husband's death, Lady Avon received many tributes for 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 (Churchill's biographer, Martin Gilbert, having previously declined an invitation). Published in 1986 and 2003 respectively, both offered a broadly sympathetic 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 US with an acknowledgement of Lady Avon's interest and co-operation. Lady Avon remained in touch with many influential friends. For example, in the lead-up to the Falklands War of 1982, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, confided during a cabinet meeting that the former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger had spoken to Lady Avon of the risk of a "[s]ocialist" regime being established in Argentina. Lady Avon also attended various state occasions, as well as gatherings of former prime ministers and their families. 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