that the now fêted ‘few’ had in 1940 failed in the air battle over Britain, and that Germany had invaded our sceptred isle. If Churchill’s entreaty to fight them on the beaches then also failed, as it surely would have, and the Germans reached London, he had declared that he would fight to the last from his bunker in Whitehall, Tommy Gun in hand. He had even sent a Tommy Gun to Buckingham Palace so that the King (who had refused to be evacuated to Canada) could practise firing one. Princess
