The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

20
Dunkirk: The Middle
THERE WAS STILL no mention of any evacuation in the British newspapers on
Thursday, 30 May, although there was much about the heroics of the RAF
and the bravery of the BEF still fighting in Flanders. There were, however,
the usual listings: births, deaths, marriages. There was sports news – racing
at Bath, and although there was no longer any first class cricket, the schools
were still reported; the MCC was playing Winchester College. As in Berlin,
the theatres were still running in London and West End shows were listed.
At the New Theatre, George Bernard Shaw’s new play, In Good King
Charles’s Golden Day, had opened, starring, amongst others, the wellknown
actress Margaret Rawlings.
It was a busy time for Margaret, who, just a few days short of her thirtyfourth
birthday, had only finished her previous West End play, A House in
the Square, five days before. Amongst her admirers was John Dundas, the
older brother of Cocky, and she had arranged for him and two of his friends
to see her in the play’s final night. Afterwards, she had accompanied all
three of them to a party. ‘You looked your most beautiful last night,’ John
wrote to her the next day, ‘and ever so you!’
The two shared an unusually close friendship. Ten years older than
John, Margaret already had a failed marriage behind her, and was now
having an affair with the playwright and novelist Charles Morgan, who was
married and refused to leave his wife. There was another admirer, Robert
Barlow, a businessman, who ran Metal Box Company, a tinning
manufacturing business already turned over to war work, but he too was
married and fifteen years her senior. If John minded this rather complicated
tangle of lovers and admirers, he did not say so. Instead, he was grateful to
have a friend and confidante from the glamorous world of the theatre, and
someone who enjoyed intellectual debate as much as he.
John had got to know her two years before, having met her after a
performance in Leeds, which he had been reviewing for the Yorkshire Post.
Two days later he had written to her asking to see her again. ‘Don’t you
think,’ he had written, ‘that on Monday we left a good many intellectual (or