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Germany.
    There was a real sense of panic during those days. There were rumours of mass evacuation away from the dangers of the nearby armaments factory. Housewives were already beginning to hoard food, as whispers of rationing spread. Just two days before the war started, I dropped a quick note to my parents, written hastily at the post office:
Working hard as house in dreadful state – all Avignon to be evacuated because of nearness of powder factory …The telephone for private calls is cut and a telegram takes three days unless official! …Trying to buy sugar – impossible to find anywhere.
    I could not have returned to England in September 1939 even if I had wanted to. With the armed forces being mobilized, the travel situation in France during those first few weeks of war was chaotic. I explained in a letter home to my distraught parents:
There are no seats on the trains now, and no regular times, nothing but troops moving all the time … travelling conditions are not really possible for me alone, whatever the English authorities say.
    The German invasion of Poland lasted only a matter of weeks. This surprisingly swift victory added to my confusion over whether I should stay or go. Everyone I talked to in Avignon fully expected England to be invaded at any moment. This was surely no time to return? My letters home were now more concerned with my family’s safety back in England than with my own in France: ‘You should get out before the inevitable aerial onslaught,’ I pleaded.
    My parents thought otherwise. Once the war had started they wanted me home and they continued to worry about me throughout the period of the Phoney War. In October my concerned father enlisted the support of the British Consul in nearby Marseille, a Mr Norman King.
    This gentleman wrote me a rather pompous letter, stating that he was in full agreement with my father that I should return forthwith to England, especially given that train services were now running again quite regularly. His Majesty’s Government would offer me any financial assistance needed, he added. Like a rather stubborn and naughty child, I wrote back saying that for the present I was not leaving but would (of course) obtain the necessary visas if and when I decided to go.
    I was secretly rather impressed by the fact that the letter and envelope were stamped with the royal cipher. It certainly had the effect of making me begin the lengthy process of ensuring that my papers were in order – endless forms, stamps and payments – so that I could leave the country when necessary. I understood my parents’ concerns. I made a promise to write a postcard to a member of the family every other day on the even date. Needless to say, this commitment was never kept.
    Just how differently my parents and I viewed events, living on either side of the English Channel, was summed up by my polite thanks to them for having filled in my ration forms. There was ‘nothing like that here yet’. I continued: ‘Your taxes and rationing are necessarily stiffer than out here, where life is not so dear, but each day there seems to be another restriction or expense for you – still our time is coming!’
    As it turned out, of course, hostilities weren’t to start in Western Europe in earnest until the following year. Life in Avignon returned to a sort of normality after the first few weeks of panic and confusion. It seemed that large-scale war might be avoided after all. ‘The Anglo-French firm outlook is a ray of hope,’ I wrote to my father. I settled in France ever more comfortably during that winter. Monsieur Manguin’s absence in the army brought some financial problems for the family and they could no longer pay me. But this was a blessing in disguise, as it forced me to take on private English classes. I was soon saving money for the first time in my life. I had mastered the French language by now and even had vague plans to move to Paris the following autumn to start studies at