GREAT BRITAIN: Queen of the Air

Lions of London’s midsummer social season this year have not been belted earls but simple U.S. journalists. Publisher George Backer of the New York Post, Editor Herbert Agar of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Radioracle Raymond Gram Swing have dined, winedir” by the London Daily Herald’s veteran Columnist Hannen Swaffer, Miss Thompson had to install three stenographers and two male social secretaries in her suite at the Savoy to answer mail and arrange engagements. So busy was she that Lady Reading, relict of the late great jurist, was unable to make a date to see her. Later Lady Reading pointedly absented herself from a reception in Miss Thompson’s honor.

In the first half of her two weeks’ stay she 1) addressed the nation over BBC; 2) spoke in the House of Commons in person; 3) ate meals with Winston Churchill, Lady Astor, Ernest Bevin, Harry Hopkins, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Brendan Bracken (new Minister of Information), several other members of the British Cabinet; 4) shook hands with some 1,200 leading Britons at a reception in her honor at the Savoy; 5) went to the movies with Anthony Eden* 6) interviewed a score of notables, from Czechoslovakia’s Eduard Benes to Zionist Chaim Weizmann; 7) spoke at a fireman’s dance in a London suburb. She still looked forward to touring munitions factories with Supply Minister Lord Beaverbrook, interviewing exiled King Peter of Yugoslavia.