I think my life in particular—I’m not sure about all our lives—seems to have been punctuated by tragedies that turned into… good luck in a variety of ways.

I don’t remember much of the [Kindertransport] journey. I have this feeling I had a lack of feeling.I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t particularly pleased. Apparently I said to my sister ‘I bet the people who receive us have a car.’ They had a Rolls Bentley. I was very pleased with that. They lived in a house. The house is listed & quite famous. An architect called Walter Gropius came to England at that time & this was the only house that he designed for private residence–ever. A Gropius & Fry design: 66 Old Church Street. I slept there through the Blitz. There’s one vivid memory of the Blitz. I slept next to a curved bit of glass which was a house feature. I’d got up. There was a lot of noise. Looked out through another window at searchlights & then went to visit the lavatory, at which time a landmine exploded not very far away. It blew in that window, that curved window. I came back & there it was on my pillow. That was my only near-miss of the Blitz. We had a shelter in the bottom of the house which nobody ever used.