Cliveden set

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The Cliveden Set were allegedly a 1930s right-wing, upper class group of prominent individuals politically influential in pre-World War II Britain, who were in the circle of Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor. The name comes from Cliveden, the stately home in Buckinghamshire, which was then Astor's country residence.

The "Cliveden Set" tag was coined by Claud Cockburn in his journalism for the Communist newspaper The Week. It has long been widely accepted that this aristocratic Germanophile social network was not only in favour of the appeasement of Adolf Hitler but also in favour of friendly relations with Nazi Germany . Norman Rose's 2000 account of the group proposes that, when gathered at Cliveden, it functioned more like a think-tank than a cabal.

The actual beliefs and influence of the Cliveden Set is a matter of some dispute, though most historians of the period in the late 20th century came to consider the Cliveden Set allegations to be exaggerated. For instance, Christopher Sykes, in a 1972 sympathetic biography of Nancy Astor, argues that the entire story about the so-called Cliveden Set was an ideologically motivated fabrication by Claud Cockburn that came to be generally accepted by a public looking for scapegoats for British pre-war appeasement of Adolf Hitler. There are also academic arguments that while Clockburn's account may have not have been entirely accurate, his main allegations cannot be easily dismissed[1].

[edit] Prominent members

• Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor
• Geoffrey Dawson, editor of the London Times newspaper
• Lord Lothian, author and politician
• Lord Halifax, politician

[edit] References

• The Cliveden Set:Portrait of an Exclusive Fraternity Norman Rose (2000)
• Nancy, the Life of Lady Astor Christopher Sykes (London, Collins, 1972)
• "A Reevaluation of Cockburn's Cliveden Set", online academic essay, John Taylor, San Francisco State University (1999)