HOW I PLANNED TO ASSASSINATE HITLER

DURING the war my sister Carey and I, then aged around nine and seven, became convinced that Hitler and all his henchmen would come to England and each choose a stately home to live in. We had some idea that Hitler was going to Windsor and presumed, rather grandly, that either Himmler or Goering would choose Holkham. We weren’t far wrong. It transpired that the Nazis had, indeed, planned to take over the country estates, although Hitler had his sights on Blenheim. Discussing the dire situation, Carey and I felt Hitler was bound to visit Holkham at some point, so we decided that, somehow, we would go back there to kill him. In preparation for the assassination, we created a poison that we called ‘Hitler’s mess’, a collection of jam jars containing anything really disgusting — scraps of food and medicine, muddy water and bits of fluff from the carpet. We had decided to make Hitler fall in love with us. We had heard he liked the Aryan look and we were both fair-haired, especially Carey, who was the blondest little thing with huge blue eyes. We thought we must take advantage of this in order to save Britain. We used to practise by pretending our teddy bear was Hitler, sidling up to him and saying things like: ‘How lovely to see you. We’re so pleased you’ve come to Holkham,’ and ‘Do you enjoy staying here? We’ve got a lovely drink for you, Mr Hitler — we’ve been saving it especially for you.’ We didn’t quite think through what would happen if we did actually manage to kill Hitler, but then, I suppose we didn’t get that far. We were absolutely convinced, however, that we could, and would, do it.