RC: Well, I remember it because I was at a German university at that time, and it was perfectly clear — the Germans thought they would get the rest of Czechoslovakia, etc. But then, you see, I was at the time a passionate peacenik, I worshipped Dick Sheppard and the anti-war movement. The change was a real sea change then. I, as a passionate pacifist, like a vast number of people, was turned round. But the odd thing about Germany was that we were obsessed with the danger of a war but the German population thought there was no danger of war at all. "He'll get what he wants." What he wanted back then was that Germany should turn to the east. The whole sea changed: the anti-war movement, which was very strong, just collapsed. 

DJ: Why do you think Oswald Mosley was put in prison after the fall of France? Do you think there was a moment in that summer of 1940 when the people were very worried that there would be an attempt to make a compromise peace, effectively to surrender? And therefore people like Mosley who were still advocating peace, still denouncing the war, were too dangerous to be left at liberty?

NM: The story is, I think, that they obviously wanted a national government in May 1940 and Labour wouldn't join a national government unless Mosley was put in jail.

RC: It's interesting that the secret service weren't worried about Mosley until Dunkirk.

NM: Yes, absolutely. 

DJ: That what I was getting at — there was a moment of danger when people like Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, were talking quietly behind the scenes about whether we could reach some sort of terms.

NM: Yes, I think that most people were, and it was only Churchill who absolutely dug his toes in finally and said no. But then I don't think anyone knows what the final moves were that meant they had to go to jail. Both he and my stepmother Diana suddenly went to jail. My father was sent to jail because it was supposed to be that Attlee made it a condition that they [Labour] wouldn't join the government unless Mosley went to jail. Diana's sister Nancy wrote to the Home Office and said: "Well if you're putting Mosley in jail, for God's sake, put my sister Diana in too, she's much more dangerous."

RC: We must get down to this awkward question about his anti-Semitism. I knew him very well. I enjoyed his company very much. He was extremely courteous when he didn't lose his temper, which he frequently did in ordinary conversations about politics — he was an extremely interesting conversationalist. But the anti-Semitism is a terribly important part of it all. Nicholas and I disagree about it, you see.

DJ: Did you get the feeling, Raymond, that he was really an anti-Semite?

RC: Yes, he was a curious type of anti-Semite. He wasn't a racist in the Nazi sense of the word. But he did have the whole thing about the Jews running everything from the cinema to the banking system and so on. He was a curiously old-fashioned anti-Semite. I had a two- or three-hour conversation discussing his anti-Semitism. He justified it, which was totally unsympathetic to me. It was old-fashioned but it tipped over into speaking the same language as anti-Semites did.