My mother, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and that 'cottage' in Newport.

Good taste, good humor, and good gossip were all laid on last week when David and I stopped by for tea in Beaulieu. One of the grand old ‘cottages’ of Newport, Rhode Island. And once upon a time somewhere my mother had spent a summer….

My mother was only 10 years old when it was unexpectedly announced that she and her sister, Patricia, were being sent to America until the end of the war. They were going to stay with someone called, Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt, in New York.

They were going, it was explained, because their great-grandfather, Ernest Cassell, was Jewish. My mother nodded wisely but didn't really understand why that meant they had to leave, she imagined it had something to do with Hitler, but she didn't know for sure.

Her parents had booked them passage to the United States aboard SS Washington, the last ship to take children across the Atlantic before the crossing became too dangerous. The ship was so full that some of the passengers had to sleep in the drained swimming pool….