Albert Sammons and I were asked to play at a party in the home of Lady Colefax in Westminster. Lady Colefax was the wife of Sir Arthur Colefax, a brilliant lawyer, and was well known as a wonderful hostess in London, having frequent gatherings of musicians, painters and writers at her beautiful home in the vicinity of the Houses of Parliament. It was arranged that we were to start our programme with my variations on a theme of Haendel for unaccompanied violin and viola. We had no sooner taken our instruments out of their cases when we heard the distant sound of the siren. / We both hurriedly decided (sotto voce) to ignore all marks of expression, repeat every variation and play double forte the whole time. This device effectively reduced the noise of the falling bombs to a minimum. << less