The Edens flew back to England just before Christmas 1956. A young witness of their departure from Kingston airport recalled Lady Eden looking "glacial" and her husband, pale. Lady Avon noted that, on their return, "everyone looking at us with thoughtful eyes". Early in January 1957, the Edens stayed with the Queen at Sandringham, where Sir Anthony informed her of his intention to resign as Prime Minister. Eden tendered his resignation formally at Buckingham Palace on 9 January. When Harold Macmillan was appointed as his successor in preference to R. A. Butler, Lady Avon wrote to Butler (whom two years earlier she had described in her diary as "curiously unnatural") that she thought politics "a beastly profession ... and how greatly I admire your dignity and good humour". (In 1952 she had told Duff Cooper that she thought modern politics something of a "farce".)