Debo spent silent hours in the chicken house learning to do an exact imitation of the look of pained concentration that comes over a hen’s face when it is laying an egg…. Unity and I made up a complete language called Boudledidge, unintelligible to anyone but ourselves, in which we translated various dirty songs (for safe singing in f) But Mitford found her family’s environment to be as oppressive as it was unique, and she eloped with Churchill’s nephew, Esmond Romilly, to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
