That night Lloyd was too shocked and bewildered to know how he felt. His father was Fitz – the aristocrat, the Tory, the father of Boy, the father-in-law of Daisy. Should he be sad about it, angry, suicidal? The revelation was so devastating that he felt numbed. It was like an injury so grave that at first there was no pain.

The morning news gave him something else to think about.

In the early hours the German army had made a lightning westward strike. Although it was anticipated, Lloyd knew that the best efforts of Allied intelligence had been unable to discover the date in advance, and the armies of those small states had been taken by surprise. Nevertheless, they were fighting back bravely.

‘That’s probably true,’ said Uncle Billy, ‘but the BBC would say it anyway.’

Prime Minister Chamberlain had called a Cabinet meeting that was going on at that very moment. However, the French army, reinforced by ten British divisions already in France, had long ago agreed a plan for dealing with such an invasion, and that plan had automatically gone into operation. Allied troops had crossed the French border into Holland and Belgium from the west and were rushing to meet the Germans.

With the momentous news heavy on their hearts, the Williams family caught the bus into the town centre and made their way to Bournemouth Pavilion, where the party conference was being held.

There they heard the news from Westminster. Chamberlain was clinging to power. Billy learned that the Prime Minister had asked Labour Party leader Clement Attlee to become a Cabinet Minister, making the government a coalition of the three main parties.

All three of them were aghast at this prospect. Chamberlain the appeaser would remain Prime Minister, and the Labour Party would be obliged to support him in a coalition government. It did not bear thinking about.

‘What did Attlee say?’ asked Lloyd.

‘That he would have to consult his National Executive Committee,’ Billy replied.

‘That’s us.’ Both Lloyd and Billy were members of the committee, which had a meeting scheduled for four o’clock that afternoon.

‘Right,’ said Ethel. ‘Let’s start canvassing, and find out how much support Chamberlain’s plan might have on our executive.’

‘None, I should think,’ said Lloyd.

‘Don’t be so sure,’ said his mother. ‘There will be some who want to keep Churchill out at any price.’

Lloyd spent the next few hours in constant political activity, talking to members of the committee and their friends and assistants, in cafés and bars in the pavilion and along the seafront. He ate no lunch, but drank so much tea that he felt he might have floated.

He was disappointed to find that not everyone shared his view of Chamberlain and Churchill. There were a few pacifists left over from the last war, who wanted peace at any price, and approved of Chamberlain’s appeasement. On the other side, Welsh MPs still thought of Churchill as the Home Secretary who sent the troops in to break a strike in Tonypandy. That had been thirty years ago, but Lloyd was learning that memories could be long in politics.