Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly
Encyclopedia
Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly, OBE, (née Llewellyn) (13 November 1913 – 11 February 2001), was the British author of To War With Whitaker: The Wartime Diaries of the Countess of Ranfurly, 1939–1945. Published when Lady Ranfurly was in her eighties, these highly successful diaries were widely admired for their illustration of the writer's courage, pluck and humour.
into a wealthy family of Welsh origin. She had a handsome older brother, Griffith Owen (1912–1933), and two beautiful sisters, Cynthia (born 1916) and Daphne (born 1922); "I started life as a disappointment — because I wasn't a boy", she recalled. "I continued being a disappointment — because I was ugly. Instead of minding, I determined to ride better, run faster, be funnier and give more generous presents than the rest of the family." Their father, Griffith Robert Poyntz Llewellyn, was dashing, popular and extravagant; his lack of caution was to have disastrous consequences, and he lost the family fortune on horses and houses when Hermione was thirteen. "We became poor very quickly", she reported. Their mother Emily Constance (née Elwes) was beautiful and loving, but during Hermione's childhood became mentally ill and was diagnosed with manic-depression
. The family accompanied her to Switzerland for treatment. There was further family tragedy with Owen's death in an air crash.
She completed her education at Southover Manor School
, in Sussex
.
. She had scarcely ever been in a kitchen, and had difficulty giving personal advice to customers. Nevertheless, she became a successful saleswoman and wrote that "people seemed to like it when I said: 'Always buy a gas cooker with a large oven, then you can commit suicide with your husband'". Hermione took a secretarial course and subsequently found employment in a War Office
typing pool. She remained short of money, and though invited to balls and for weekends at country houses, she had to decline, as she could not afford to buy the necessary clothes.
In 1937, Hermione went to Australia as secretary to Lord Wakehurst who had been appointed as Governor of New South Wales
. On a visit to Canberra
, she met Daniel Knox, 6th Earl of Ranfurly, who was aide-de-camp
to the Australian Governor-General. The day she returned to England, she found Ranfurly seated on the sofa in her London flat, reading the Sporting Life
; the two immediately became engaged, and were married on 17 January 1939.
holiday in Scotland when the news came that Germany had invaded Poland. Cutting short their trip, they returned to London, where a telegram awaited them from Dan's Yeomanry
regiment, the Sherwood Rangers
, telling him to report to duty in Nottinghamshire
. Dan turned to their portly cook-butler, Whitaker, and asked if Whitaker was coming too. Hermione recorded that "Whitaker sat there looking fat and rather red, and he said, 'To the war my Lord?' and Dan said 'Yes'. And Whitaker said: 'Very good, my Lord,' as though Dan had asked for a cup of coffee." The exchange was to provide the title of Lady Ranfurly's war diaries, which proved to be an unexpected publishing success in the 1990s.
On their first wedding anniversary, Lord Ranfurly left with the Sherwood Rangers for a posting to the British-controlled Palestine. Regulations barred wives of the Yeomanry from joining their husbands at the front. However, Hermione ignored the rules, and in February 1940 managed to obtain a passage to Egypt
from a shady London travel agent, arriving in Palestine two weeks later.
Hermione thought that with her secretarial skills, she would easily find a job in the Middle East. It proved more difficult than expected, and in September 1940 a one-eyed brigadier ordered her forcible repatriation to Britain with other "illegal wives". Determined not to be separated from her husband, she jumped ship from the RMS Empress of Britain
at Cape Town
, and succeeded in obtaining an aeroplane ticket back to Egypt by implying to a travel agent that she was a spy on a secret mission. The Empress of Britain was sunk shortly after.
On arrival in Cairo, Lady Ranfurly laid low in the flat of her friends Pamela
and Patrick Hore-Ruthven
, but gradually her return became known. Her actions infuriated the British military authorities, which made finding a job difficult. However, her secretarial skills were in short supply and she was soon recruited to work for the Special Operations Executive
office in Cairo. Despite continued opposition from the Army, who failed in an attempt to have British ambassador Sir Miles Lampson remove her passport, she became the highly efficient secretary to George Pollock, the head of the SOE. At first pleased with her job, she quickly became concerned about the SOE's actions, intentions and dubious security and finances, and considered that the organisation was working "across, if not against, the war effort". In March 1941, she expressed her concerns to the visiting Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
and in May to General Wavell, the Commander-in-Chief for the Middle East. Wavell could take no direct action since SOE did not come under the War Office, but sharing her concerns, he asked her to pass on any documents that aroused her suspicion. She achieved this by stealing questionable documents from the office each evening, typing a copy of them and then returning the originals to their positions the next morning. Her subterfuge led directly to a major reorganization of SOE Cairo in the summer of 1941.
In April 1941, Dan Ranfurly was reported missing after the Battle of Tobruk, and Hermione had no knowledge about whether he was living or dead until she received a letter from him five months later. He remained a prisoner of war
in Italy for three years, escaping in 1944 following the Italian armistice. In the interim, Lady Ranfurly received special permission to remain in the Middle East from General Wavell, and worked first as a personal assistant to Sir Harold MacMichael
, the High Commissioner in Palestine, and later to General Henry Maitland Wilson, the Supreme Allied commander in the Mediterranean. She was renowned for the tenacity of her desire not to return to England, and General Wilson described Hermione as having "outmanoeuvred every general in the Middle East" in order to achieve her goal.
Between 1941 and 1944, Hermione Ranfurly lived in Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad
and Algiers
, and met many of famous names who passed through the region, including Lady Diana Cooper
, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Sir Walter Monckton, Gaston Palewski
, and Noel Coward
. She shared a house in Baghdad with Freya Stark
, took General George C. Patton shopping in Cairo, dined with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in Algiers, and helped fix GeneralBernard Montgomery's beret, though she did not think much of the "corny Englishman" complaining that he "would drop his macintosh on the floor and then shout at someone to pick it up." She dined with King Peter II of Yugoslavia
, King Farouk of Egypt
and the future King Paul of Greece
. She befriended a number of intelligence and Special Air Service
officers, including Orde Wingate, Fitzroy MacLean, David Stirling
and Bill Stirling, and was taught to shoot by a mysterious red-faced man called "Abercrombie" so as to be able to do her part against the Germans. By the end of the war, she likely knew more secrets than any other civilian in the area.
Dan Ranfurly was reunited with his wife in Algiers in May 1944, and after a brief trip to England, Hermione resumed her work as secretary to General Wilson in Algiers and Caserta, Italy, while her husband joined Fitzroy MacLean's liaison mission to Yugoslavia
. Hermione was well-positioned for more noteworthy encounters: she taught Admiral Kent Hewitt to dance the Boomps-a-Daisy, and received Marshal Josip Broz Tito
for tea: "he was short and stocky and dressed to kill" according to the hostess.
In November 1944, Hermione Ranfurly accepted General Wilson's request that she continue as his secretary when he moved to Washington, D.C.
to be head of the British Joint Staff Mission. He rescinded his offer at the last moment, leaving Hermione without a job, luggage or reference. With Dan Ranfurly in Rome, she managed to find a job working for Air Marshal John Slessor
, first in Naples
and later in London, where she celebrated VE Day by emptying five wastepaper baskets of Slessor's "more boring papers" out of the window.
, and later farmed in Buckinghamshire
, while Hermione attempted to put her wartime letters and diaries in order while seated on the sitting room floor. The writer Peter Fleming, an old friend, arranged for her to get a contract for their publication; however, Hermione got cold feet, and repaid the advance nine days later. A daughter, Lady Caroline, was born in 1948. On 20 October 1953, Lord Ranfurly was appointed Governor of the Bahamas by Winston Churchill
. Hermione took a great interest in all aspects of Bahamian life, and was concerned by the lack of books in libraries and schools. She asked friends to send unwanted volumes, a project that was to become the Ranfurly Library Service in Nassau
. The couple also founded a children's home.
When the Ranfurlys returned to the United Kingdom in 1957, Lady Ranfurly extended the Ranfurly Library Service project to other developing countries short on English books; the organization later changed its name to Book Aid International
. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1970 New Year Honours
.
Lord Ranfurly died of cancer in 1988, and the Countess continued to work her diaries in Buckinghamshire. Her old friend and neighbour Lord Carrington
read her work, and with his help To War With Whitaker was published in 1994. The diaries were an immediate success, and one reviewer noted that they offered "a madcap, aristocratic window behind the lines of war". Encouraged by its success, she published a memoir of her childhood, The Ugly One, in 1998.
Lady Ranfurly enjoyed her old age, noting "you have so many more memories than when you are young". She died at her home in Buckinghamshire on 11 February 2001 at the age of 87.
Childhood
Hermione Llewellyn was born in Postlip, GloucestershireGloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
into a wealthy family of Welsh origin. She had a handsome older brother, Griffith Owen (1912–1933), and two beautiful sisters, Cynthia (born 1916) and Daphne (born 1922); "I started life as a disappointment — because I wasn't a boy", she recalled. "I continued being a disappointment — because I was ugly. Instead of minding, I determined to ride better, run faster, be funnier and give more generous presents than the rest of the family." Their father, Griffith Robert Poyntz Llewellyn, was dashing, popular and extravagant; his lack of caution was to have disastrous consequences, and he lost the family fortune on horses and houses when Hermione was thirteen. "We became poor very quickly", she reported. Their mother Emily Constance (née Elwes) was beautiful and loving, but during Hermione's childhood became mentally ill and was diagnosed with manic-depression
Bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder or bipolar affective disorder, historically known as manic–depressive disorder, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or...
. The family accompanied her to Switzerland for treatment. There was further family tragedy with Owen's death in an air crash.
She completed her education at Southover Manor School
Southover Manor School
Southover Manor School was an independent boarding school for girls at Lewes, East Sussex, with a preparatory department.-History:The school was founded in 1924 at Lewes by Winifred Ponsonby. Initially a convent school, it was based at Southover Manor, which later became a Grade II listed...
, in Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
.
Career
In 1930 and impoverished, a 17-year-old Hermione moved to London to look for a job. As she noted, she was "ill-prepared for life beyond the bounds of a country estate", and had no qualifications except "good English and good manners." It was the height of the Depression, and there were few available openings, but she managed to obtain a job selling gas appliances for the Gas Light and Coke CompanyGas Light and Coke Company
The Gas Light and Coke Company , was a company that made and supplied coal gas and coke. The Company was located on Horseferry Road in Westminster, London...
. She had scarcely ever been in a kitchen, and had difficulty giving personal advice to customers. Nevertheless, she became a successful saleswoman and wrote that "people seemed to like it when I said: 'Always buy a gas cooker with a large oven, then you can commit suicide with your husband'". Hermione took a secretarial course and subsequently found employment in a War Office
War Office
The War Office was a department of the British Government, responsible for the administration of the British Army between the 17th century and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the Ministry of Defence...
typing pool. She remained short of money, and though invited to balls and for weekends at country houses, she had to decline, as she could not afford to buy the necessary clothes.
In 1937, Hermione went to Australia as secretary to Lord Wakehurst who had been appointed as Governor of New South Wales
Governors of New South Wales
The Governor of New South Wales is the state viceregal representative of the Australian monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, who is equally shared with 15 other sovereign nations in a form of personal union, as well as with the eleven other jurisdictions of Australia, and resides predominantly in her...
. On a visit to Canberra
Canberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
, she met Daniel Knox, 6th Earl of Ranfurly, who was aide-de-camp
Aide-de-camp
An aide-de-camp is a personal assistant, secretary, or adjutant to a person of high rank, usually a senior military officer or a head of state...
to the Australian Governor-General. The day she returned to England, she found Ranfurly seated on the sofa in her London flat, reading the Sporting Life
Sporting Life (newspaper)
The Sporting Life was a British newspaper published between 1859 and 1998 that was best known for its coverage of horse racing. Latterly it has continued as a multi-sports website....
; the two immediately became engaged, and were married on 17 January 1939.
World War II
The Ranfurlys were on a stalkingDeer stalking
Deer stalking is a British term for the stealthy pursuit of deer for sporting purposes, historically with dogs such as Scottish Deerhounds, or in modern times typically with a high powered rifle fitted with a telescopic sight to hunt them....
holiday in Scotland when the news came that Germany had invaded Poland. Cutting short their trip, they returned to London, where a telegram awaited them from Dan's Yeomanry
Yeomanry
Yeomanry is a designation used by a number of units or sub-units of the British Territorial Army, descended from volunteer cavalry regiments. Today, Yeomanry units may serve in a variety of different military roles.-History:...
regiment, the Sherwood Rangers
Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry
The Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry is one of the five squadrons of the Royal Yeomanry , an armoured regiment of the Territorial Army. Designated as 'S' Squadron, the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry's current role is to support the Formation Reconnaissance Regiments and the Joint Chemical Biological Nuclear...
, telling him to report to duty in Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...
. Dan turned to their portly cook-butler, Whitaker, and asked if Whitaker was coming too. Hermione recorded that "Whitaker sat there looking fat and rather red, and he said, 'To the war my Lord?' and Dan said 'Yes'. And Whitaker said: 'Very good, my Lord,' as though Dan had asked for a cup of coffee." The exchange was to provide the title of Lady Ranfurly's war diaries, which proved to be an unexpected publishing success in the 1990s.
On their first wedding anniversary, Lord Ranfurly left with the Sherwood Rangers for a posting to the British-controlled Palestine. Regulations barred wives of the Yeomanry from joining their husbands at the front. However, Hermione ignored the rules, and in February 1940 managed to obtain a passage to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
from a shady London travel agent, arriving in Palestine two weeks later.
Hermione thought that with her secretarial skills, she would easily find a job in the Middle East. It proved more difficult than expected, and in September 1940 a one-eyed brigadier ordered her forcible repatriation to Britain with other "illegal wives". Determined not to be separated from her husband, she jumped ship from the RMS Empress of Britain
RMS Empress of Britain (1931)
The RMS Empress of Britain was an ocean liner built between 1928 and 1931 by John Brown shipyard in Scotland and owned by Canadian Pacific Steamship Company. This ship — second of three CP vessels named Empress of Britain — provided scheduled trans-Atlantic passenger service from spring to autumn...
at Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
, and succeeded in obtaining an aeroplane ticket back to Egypt by implying to a travel agent that she was a spy on a secret mission. The Empress of Britain was sunk shortly after.
On arrival in Cairo, Lady Ranfurly laid low in the flat of her friends Pamela
Pamela Cooper
Pamela Margaret Cooper was a British courtier, campaigner for refugees, and a supporter of the Palestinian people.-Biography:...
and Patrick Hore-Ruthven
Patrick Hore-Ruthven
Major The Honourable Alexander Hardinge Patrick Hore-Ruthven was a British soldier and poet.Hore-Ruthven was born in Quetta in India. He was the only surviving child of Alexander Hore-Ruthven and his wife, Zara Eileen née Pollok.He studied at Cambridge University from 1931...
, but gradually her return became known. Her actions infuriated the British military authorities, which made finding a job difficult. However, her secretarial skills were in short supply and she was soon recruited to work for the Special Operations Executive
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
office in Cairo. Despite continued opposition from the Army, who failed in an attempt to have British ambassador Sir Miles Lampson remove her passport, she became the highly efficient secretary to George Pollock, the head of the SOE. At first pleased with her job, she quickly became concerned about the SOE's actions, intentions and dubious security and finances, and considered that the organisation was working "across, if not against, the war effort". In March 1941, she expressed her concerns to the visiting Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
and in May to General Wavell, the Commander-in-Chief for the Middle East. Wavell could take no direct action since SOE did not come under the War Office, but sharing her concerns, he asked her to pass on any documents that aroused her suspicion. She achieved this by stealing questionable documents from the office each evening, typing a copy of them and then returning the originals to their positions the next morning. Her subterfuge led directly to a major reorganization of SOE Cairo in the summer of 1941.
In April 1941, Dan Ranfurly was reported missing after the Battle of Tobruk, and Hermione had no knowledge about whether he was living or dead until she received a letter from him five months later. He remained a prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
in Italy for three years, escaping in 1944 following the Italian armistice. In the interim, Lady Ranfurly received special permission to remain in the Middle East from General Wavell, and worked first as a personal assistant to Sir Harold MacMichael
Harold MacMichael
Sir Harold Alfred MacMichael, GCMG, DSO , was a British colonial administrator.-Early service:MacMichael graduated with a first from Magdalene College, Cambridge. After passing his civil service exam, he entered the service of the British Empire in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan...
, the High Commissioner in Palestine, and later to General Henry Maitland Wilson, the Supreme Allied commander in the Mediterranean. She was renowned for the tenacity of her desire not to return to England, and General Wilson described Hermione as having "outmanoeuvred every general in the Middle East" in order to achieve her goal.
Between 1941 and 1944, Hermione Ranfurly lived in Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
and Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
, and met many of famous names who passed through the region, including Lady Diana Cooper
Lady Diana Cooper
Lady Diana Cooper, Viscountess Norwich was an English socialite and actress.-Birth and youth:Born Lady Diana Olivia Winifred Maud Manners, she was officially the youngest daughter of the 8th Duke of Rutland and his wife, the former Violet Lindsay, but Lady Diana's real father was widely supposed...
, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Sir Walter Monckton, Gaston Palewski
Gaston Palewski
Gaston Palewski , French politician, was a close associate of Charles de Gaulle during and after World War II. He is also remembered as the lover of the English novelist Nancy Mitford, and appears in a fictionalised form in two of her novels.-Biography:Palewski was born in Paris, the son of an...
, and Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
. She shared a house in Baghdad with Freya Stark
Freya Stark
Dame Freya Madeline Stark, Mrs. Perowne, DBE was a British explorer and travel writer. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels, which were mainly in Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan....
, took General George C. Patton shopping in Cairo, dined with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in Algiers, and helped fix GeneralBernard Montgomery's beret, though she did not think much of the "corny Englishman" complaining that he "would drop his macintosh on the floor and then shout at someone to pick it up." She dined with King Peter II of Yugoslavia
Peter II of Yugoslavia
Peter II, also known as Peter II Karađorđević , was the third and last King of Yugoslavia...
, King Farouk of Egypt
Farouk of Egypt
Farouk I of Egypt , was the tenth ruler from the Muhammad Ali Dynasty and the penultimate King of Egypt and Sudan, succeeding his father, Fuad I, in 1936....
and the future King Paul of Greece
Paul of Greece
Paul reigned as King of Greece from 1947 to 1964.-Family and early life:Paul was born in Athens, the third son of King Constantine I of Greece and his wife, Princess Sophia of Prussia. He was trained as a naval officer....
. She befriended a number of intelligence and Special Air Service
Special Air Service
Special Air Service or SAS is a corps of the British Army constituted on 31 May 1950. They are part of the United Kingdom Special Forces and have served as a model for the special forces of many other countries all over the world...
officers, including Orde Wingate, Fitzroy MacLean, David Stirling
David Stirling
Colonel Sir Archibald David Stirling, DSO, DFC, OBE was a Scottish laird, mountaineer, World War II British Army officer, and the founder of the Special Air Service.-Life before the war:...
and Bill Stirling, and was taught to shoot by a mysterious red-faced man called "Abercrombie" so as to be able to do her part against the Germans. By the end of the war, she likely knew more secrets than any other civilian in the area.
Dan Ranfurly was reunited with his wife in Algiers in May 1944, and after a brief trip to England, Hermione resumed her work as secretary to General Wilson in Algiers and Caserta, Italy, while her husband joined Fitzroy MacLean's liaison mission to Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
. Hermione was well-positioned for more noteworthy encounters: she taught Admiral Kent Hewitt to dance the Boomps-a-Daisy, and received Marshal Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
for tea: "he was short and stocky and dressed to kill" according to the hostess.
In November 1944, Hermione Ranfurly accepted General Wilson's request that she continue as his secretary when he moved to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
to be head of the British Joint Staff Mission. He rescinded his offer at the last moment, leaving Hermione without a job, luggage or reference. With Dan Ranfurly in Rome, she managed to find a job working for Air Marshal John Slessor
John Slessor
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Cotesworth Slessor GCB, DSO, MC was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force . A pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, he held operational commands in World War II and served in the RAF's most senior post, Chief of the Air Staff, from 1950 to...
, first in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
and later in London, where she celebrated VE Day by emptying five wastepaper baskets of Slessor's "more boring papers" out of the window.
Post war
At the end of the war, Dan Ranfurly obtained a job in insurance at Lloyd's of LondonLloyd's of London
Lloyd's, also known as Lloyd's of London, is a British insurance and reinsurance market. It serves as a partially mutualised marketplace where multiple financial backers, underwriters, or members, whether individuals or corporations, come together to pool and spread risk...
, and later farmed in Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
, while Hermione attempted to put her wartime letters and diaries in order while seated on the sitting room floor. The writer Peter Fleming, an old friend, arranged for her to get a contract for their publication; however, Hermione got cold feet, and repaid the advance nine days later. A daughter, Lady Caroline, was born in 1948. On 20 October 1953, Lord Ranfurly was appointed Governor of the Bahamas by Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
. Hermione took a great interest in all aspects of Bahamian life, and was concerned by the lack of books in libraries and schools. She asked friends to send unwanted volumes, a project that was to become the Ranfurly Library Service in Nassau
Nassau, Bahamas
Nassau is the capital, largest city, and commercial centre of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. The city has a population of 248,948 , 70 percent of the entire population of The Bahamas...
. The couple also founded a children's home.
When the Ranfurlys returned to the United Kingdom in 1957, Lady Ranfurly extended the Ranfurly Library Service project to other developing countries short on English books; the organization later changed its name to Book Aid International
Book Aid International
Book Aid International is an NGO that exists to encourage literacy and access to books particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East by distributing books to libraries and other locations that increase community access. Book Aid International currently work in 12 countries in sub-Shahran...
. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1970 New Year Honours
New Year Honours
The New Year Honours is a part of the British honours system, being a civic occasion on the New Year annually in which new members of most Commonwealth Realms honours are named. The awards are presented by the reigning monarch or head of state, currently Queen Elizabeth II...
.
Lord Ranfurly died of cancer in 1988, and the Countess continued to work her diaries in Buckinghamshire. Her old friend and neighbour Lord Carrington
Peter Carington, 6th Baron Carrington
Peter Alexander Rupert Carington, 6th Baron Carrington, is a British Conservative politician. He served as British Foreign Secretary between 1979 and 1982 and as the sixth Secretary General of NATO from 1984 to 1988. He is the last surviving member of the Cabinets of both Harold Macmillan and Sir...
read her work, and with his help To War With Whitaker was published in 1994. The diaries were an immediate success, and one reviewer noted that they offered "a madcap, aristocratic window behind the lines of war". Encouraged by its success, she published a memoir of her childhood, The Ugly One, in 1998.
Lady Ranfurly enjoyed her old age, noting "you have so many more memories than when you are young". She died at her home in Buckinghamshire on 11 February 2001 at the age of 87.
Works
- To War With Whitaker: The Wartime Diaries of the Countess of Ranfurly, 1939–1945 (1994)
- The Ugly One : The childhood memoirs of Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly, 1913–1939 (1998)