 The Anthony Eden hat was essentially an accessory of the 1930s and 1940s , although , in the mid @-@ 1950s , the Homburg came to be associated with the melancholic image of comedian Tony Hancock . In 1949 a character ( Mr. Sowter ) in John Dighton 's play The Happiest Days of Your Life had been described as " soberly dressed . He wears an " Anthony Eden " hat and carries gloves " . The Suez débâcle , followed by Eden 's departure from public life in 1957 due to ill health , tended to hasten the drawing of a line that might have seemed inevitable before long in the era of " Angry Young Men " , rock ' n ' roll and Vespa motor scooters which , according to his wife Clarissa , kept Eden awake at night . As the communist historian Eric Hobsbawm put it , " Suez and the coming of rock @-@ and @-@ roll divide twentieth century British history " . 
