Gronow’s Reminiscences

January 1944, was a trying month for Alfred Duff Cooper, later Lord Norwich. As British Representative to the French Committee of Liberation, he found himself the unwilling peace-keeper between two highly incompatible men of destiny. Mr. Churchill, travelling under the assumed name of Colonel Warden in his private York, had arrived in Marrakesh. Clad in his siren suit, a huge Californian hat and a silk dressing-gown embroidered with gold dragons, he was now convalescing.

Already “much annoyed at having lost the Skipton by-election to a Commonwealth candidate,” he was daily expecting an unwelcome visit from his outraged ally, General de Gaulle. Meanwhile, there were Churchillian diversions. Seven picnics, within a fortnight, thought Duff Cooper, was strenuous going:

They had chosen a pleasant place.... There were large supplies of food and drink—two servants to wait as well as the staff, and a host of American military police standing round to protect. He sat there for more than an hour after lunch, reading the memoirs of Captain Gronow.