Wednesday November 5 9.20 pm [1941]
# INCENDIARY BOMB PRECAUTIONS
# COAST GUARDS RECOVER SALVAGE
# RON’S ENGAGEMENT PLANNED
# LORD WOOLTON PROMISES ‘MORE JAM’ ETC

Lord Woolton, Minister of Food, has been mentioned earlier – see May’s draft letter to him. His appointment from the business community (notably as chairman of a group of department stores) had been made in 1940 by Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and he retained this position in Churchill’s coalition government.

Mr and Mrs Fred Moore managed the ‘Vine Hotel’ for the owners, the Hornby family. Part of the hotel was requisitioned by the Army, including for use as an officers’ mess, during wartime. At that time Mr Moore worked as a fireman in Skegness and a relief hotel manager was in place. Will had been maintaining the garden at Mrs Lee’s ‘East View’ (see 29 Dec. 1940).

Mr and Mrs Cousins were an elderly couple who lived in South Road, in the bungalow ‘Granby’ near ‘East View’, at that time (see Village Map).

Kathie Cook, niece, one of sister Emily’s daughters (and sister of Gladys and May Lewis), who had recently married, was probably meant here.

Historian, travel writer and novelist, Owen Rutter’s White Rajah was published in 1939 (London: Hutchinson and Co). The three ‘White Rajahs of Sarawak’ were successive members of an English family, the Brookes (spelling corrected).

Page 2 of 2 | Previous page