The famous Chanel turned up and I took great fancy to her - a most capable and agreeable woman - much the stronger personality Benny [Bendor] has been up against. She hunted vigorously all day, motored to Paris after dinner, and today is engaged in passing and improving dresses on endless streams of mannequins. All together 200 models have to be settled in almost three weeks. She does it all with her own fingers, pinning, cutting, looping. Some have to be altered ten times.
Chanel […] fishes from morn to night and has killed fifty salmons (sometimes weighing 24 pounds). She is very agreeable - really a great and strong being, fit to rule a man and an empire. Benny is very well and I think extremely happy to be mated with an equal. Her ability is balancing is power.
Extract from letters Winston Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine in the late 1920s.
Reproduce in Hal Vaughan, Sleeping with the Enemy Coco Chanel, Nazi Agent (London, 2011) p.46
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