#patrick balfour

A young married woman in Leeds 'could eat no breakfast hardly and just waited with sweating palms and despair for 11 o'clock.  When the announcement was made, 'This country is at war with Germany,' I leaned against my husband and went quite dead for a minute or two.' Mavis Carter, a teacher, had 'held her chin up high' as she sat listening to the broadcast in Chepstow with her family, but that was largely 'to hold back the tears at the thought of all the slaughter ahead,' and when 'God Save the King was played, we all stood up.'  An elderly Essex woman did the same: 'I had been told by the gardener that an important announcement would be given out on the wireless.  It would either be peace or war, and anxiety increased as the time drew near.  Then it was the latter.  I stood up for God Save the King and my little dog got out of her basket and stood beside me.  I took her on my lap for comfort.' Angela Culme-Seymour was at home that Sunday morning.  A notable beauty, she had been the wife of Winston Churchill's nephew Johnny, but was now married to Patrick Balfour (the heir to the Scottish baron Lord Kinross), a journalist who wrote 'Londoner's Diary' for the Evening Standard.  She was living with her 'safe and temporary husband' in Maida Vale.  When they heard Chamberlain's broadcast, 'Patrick and I looked at each other rather hard and I felt sick.  So I said “Let's go downstairs and have a nip” with the Stowes [the butler and cook] and that's what we did.  It was odd, rather like toasting the war.  Then I went out for a walk by myself and stood on the bridge over the Grand Union Canal for a long time.  It was entirely still and quiet and I felt very, very odd.'