present when Churchill lunched with her parents and the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. The future Lady Avon described this occasion as "a nightmare, with news of people's deaths coming in ...". After her mother's death in 1941, she stayed at Chequers, the prime minister's country home in Buckinghamshire. R. A. Butler, then Minister of Education, recalled a dinner party in Eden's flat above the Foreign Office, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Attempting to defuse an argument between Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook about their respective motivation during the abdication crisis of 1936, Spencer-Churchill, just turned 21, proclaimed with patent improbability that she had three favourites, Edward VIII, Leopold III of Belgium and the aviator Charles Lindbergh. Marriage to Eden A more defined relationship with Eden, who was a married man 23 years older than Spencer-Churchill, developed gradually after they had sat next to each other at a dinner party in about 1947. Eden had been monopolised for much of the meal by a woman on his other side and afterwards, in an undertone, invited Spencer-Churchill out to dinner. In 1950, Eden was divorced from his first wife, Beatrice (née Beckett, 1905–1957). Although she was a Roman Catholic and her church was opposed to divorce, Spencer-Churchill married Eden, who had become Foreign Secretary again in 1951, in a civil ceremony at Caxton Hall, London, on 14 August 1952. This event drew large crowds, on a level with those earlier in the year for the wedding of film stars Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding, prompting Harold Macmillan, Minister of Housing, to note that "it's extraordinary how much 'glamour' [Eden] still has and how popular he is". The wedding reception was held at 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the prime minister, who at the time was Lady Eden's uncle, Churchill. Attitudes to the marriage Until 2019, Eden was one of only two British prime ministers to have been divorced (although he was one of ten to have been married twice). There was criticism of the marriage in the Church Times—"Mr. Eden's action this week shows how far the climate of public opinion in this matter has changed for the worse"—and from some others in the Anglican church, including the Archbishop of Sydney, who drew parallels with Edward VIII's having given up the throne to marry an American divorcée. Harold Macmillan, among others, thought such comparisons unfair: