The Cliveden Set were a British 1930s group of prominent individuals, the circle of Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor. The name comes from Cliveden, the stately home in Buckinghamshire, which was then her country home.
The Cliveden Set tag was applied at the time by Claud Cockburn in his journalism for The Week. It has long been widely accepted that this clique was in favour of the appeasement of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Norman Rose has written a study, and proposes that, when gathered at Cliveden, it functioned more like a think-tank than a cabal.
Reference
- The Cliveden Set:Portrait of an Exclusive Fraternity (2000) Norman Rose