Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) 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.
The county town is the city of Gl ...
, into a wealthy family of Welsh origin. She had an older brother, Griffith ''Owen'' (1912–1933), and two 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), became mentally ill during Hermione's childhood and was diagnosed with
manic-depression
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...
. 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
Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...
.
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 Company. 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
The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...
typing pool A secretarial pool or typing pool is a group of secretaries working at a company available to assist any executive without a permanently assigned secretary. These groups have been reduced or eliminated where executives have been assigned responsibil ...
. 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
The governor of New South Wales is the viceregal representative of the Australian monarch, King Charles III, in the state of New South Wales. In an analogous way to the governor-general of Australia at the national level, the governors of the ...
. On a visit to
Canberra
Canberra ( )
is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...
, she met
Daniel Knox, 6th Earl of Ranfurly
Thomas Daniel Knox, 6th Earl of Ranfurly (29 May 1914 – 6 November 1988), known as Dan Ranfurly, was a British Army officer and farmer, who served as Governor of the Bahamas. His exploits in the Second World War, along with those of his wife ...
Australian Governor-General
The governor-general of Australia is the representative of the monarch, currently King Charles III, in Australia.Sporting Life''; the two immediately became engaged, and were married on 17 January 1939.
Second World War
The Ranfurlys were on a stalking holiday in Scotland when the news came that
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
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
Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...
. Dan turned to their portly cook-butler, Whitaker, and asked if he 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 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
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...
, 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 lay low in the flat of her friends
Pamela
Pamela may refer to:
*''Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded'', a novel written by Samuel Richardson in 1740
*Pamela (name), a given name and, rarely, a surname
*Pamela Spence, a Turkish pop-rock singer. Known as her stage name "Pamela"
* MSC ''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
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its pu ...
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
The secretary of state for foreign, Commonwealth and development affairs, known as the foreign secretary, is a minister of the Crown of the Government of the United Kingdom and head of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Seen as ...
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Conservative Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 until his resignation in 1957.
Achieving rapid promo ...
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 reorganisation 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
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold prisoners of wa ...
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" to achieve her goal.Ranfurly (1994), p. 103
Between 1941 and 1944, Hermione Ranfurly lived in Cairo,
Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
,
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...
and
Algiers
Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques ...
, and met many of famous names who passed through the region, including Lady Diana Cooper,
Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Antoine is a French given name (from the Latin ''Antonius'' meaning 'highly praise-worthy') that is a variant of Danton, Titouan, D'Anton and Antonin.
The name is used in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, West Greenland, Haiti, French Guiana ...
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) 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 ...
. She shared a house in Baghdad with Freya Stark, took General
George S. Patton
George Smith Patton Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was a general in the United States Army who commanded the Seventh United States Army in the Mediterranean Theater of World War II, and the Third United States Army in France ...
shopping in Cairo, dined with
Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Jr., (December 9, 1909 – May 7, 2000) was an American actor, producer and decorated naval officer of World War II. He is best known for starring in such films as ''The Prisoner of Zenda'' (1937), ''Gunga Din'' (1939) a ...
in Algiers, and helped fix General
Bernard Montgomery
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, (; 17 November 1887 – 24 March 1976), nicknamed "Monty", was a senior British Army officer who served in the First World War, the Irish War of Independence and t ...
'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 kings:
Peter II of Yugoslavia
Peter II ( sr-Cyrl, Петар II Карађорђевић, Petar II Karađorđević; 6 September 1923 – 3 November 1970) was the last king of Yugoslavia, reigning from October 1934 until his deposition in November 1945. He was the last r ...
Paul of Greece
Paul ( el, Παύλος, ''Pávlos''; 14 December 1901 – 6 March 1964) was King of Greece from 1 April 1947 until his death in 1964. He was succeeded by his son, Constantine II.
Paul was first cousin to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and ...
. She befriended a number of intelligence and
Special Air Service
The Special Air Service (SAS) is a special forces unit of the British Army. It was founded as a regiment in 1941 by David Stirling and in 1950, it was reconstituted as a corps. The unit specialises in a number of roles including counter-terro ...
officers, including
Orde Wingate
Major General Orde Charles Wingate, (26 February 1903 – 24 March 1944) was a senior British Army officer known for his creation of the Chindit deep-penetration missions in Japanese-held territory during the Burma Campaign of the Second World ...
, 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
Caserta () is the capital of the province of Caserta in the Campania region of Italy. It is an important agricultural, commercial, and industrial ''comune'' and city. Caserta is located on the edge of the Campanian plain at the foot of the Camp ...
, while her husband joined Fitzroy Maclean's liaison mission to
. Hermione was well-positioned for more noteworthy encounters: she taught Admiral
Henry Kent Hewitt
Henry Kent Hewitt (February 11, 1887 – September 15, 1972) was the United States Navy commander of amphibious operations in north Africa and southern Europe through World War II. He was born in Hackensack, New Jersey and graduated from the Unit ...
Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz ( sh-Cyrl, Јосип Броз, ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (; sh-Cyrl, Тито, links=no, ), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman, serving in various positions from 1943 until his deat ...
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
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
. 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
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Cotesworth Slessor, (3 June 1897 – 12 July 1979) was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force (RAF), serving as Chief of the Air Staff (United Kingdom), Chief of the Air Staff from 1950 to 1952. A ...
, first in
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
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 London, and later farmed in
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...
, 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
This is a list of governors of the Bahamas. The first English settlement in the Bahamas was on Eleuthera. In 1670, the king granted the Bahamas to the lords proprietors of the Province of Carolina, but the islands were left to themselves. The loc ...
by
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
. 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 may refer to:
Places Bahamas
*Nassau, Bahamas, capital city of the Bahamas, on the island of New Providence
Canada
*Nassau District, renamed Home District, regional division in Upper Canada from 1788 to 1792
*Nassau Street (Winnipeg), ...
. 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 organisation later changed its name to
Book Aid International
Book Aid International is a UK registered charity which provides books and supports libraries in Africa and around the world. Every year the charity sends books to public and community libraries as well as libraries in prisons, refugee camps, hospi ...
. She was appointed
Officer of the Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
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
Peter Alexander Rupert Carington, 6th Baron Carrington, Baron Carington of Upton, (6 June 1919 – 9July 2018), was a British Conservative Party politician and hereditary peer who served as Defence Secretary from 1970 to 1974, Foreign Secret ...
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)