I remember in particular the following episode. In June 1937, Chamberlain, who had just been appointed prime minister and was testing the ground for a long period of ‘appeasement’, made his first speech in parliament. He spoke of the gathering thunder-clouds, the tense international situation and the need to keep a cool head so as not to provoke a catastrophe with an incautious step. The PM employed a metaphor in this connection: he spoke of avalanches of snow in the mountains which had sometimes been caused by movements in the air from a human voice. Chamberlain’s speech certainly made an impression in the House, generating a serious and anxious mood.

Lloyd George spoke next. He declared himself profoundly disappointed with the prime minister’s speech. The situation is serious indeed, and Lloyd George sketched a menacing picture of the international situation in a few vivid strokes. But how does Chamberlain propose countering the impending danger?

Lloyd George, standing at the dispatch box on the side of the opposition, shrugged his shoulders in bewilderment, jerked his left leg (he was in the habit of doing so when he spoke in parliament), pulled his pince-nez off his nose, waved it about contemptuously, and said in measured tones: ‘The prime minister recommends us to keep a cool head.’

Then he flashed his pince-nez as if it were a sword pulled from its sheath, cast a scathing look at Chamberlain opposite him, and let fly: ‘Any fish can have a cool head!’

The effect was extraordinary: the House resounded with peals of raucous, irrepressible laughter. Everybody was laughing – on the Labour, Liberal and Tory benches. The impression made by Chamberlain’s speech was instantly dispelled. And the ‘Old Wizard’ shouted in a stentorian voice: ‘We need not cool heads but courageous hearts!’

The audience burst into tumultuous applause.

Something similar happened in parliament yesterday. The morning papers announced changes in the government. In fact, the changes amount to an echo of Krylov’s

Ivan Andreevich Krylov, Russian poet and fabulist of the early nineteenth century. The fable produces the comments of a wise nightingale on the unsuccessful efforts of a tricksy monkey, a goat, an ass and a bandy-legged Mishka bear to play a quartet through changes in their seating positions: ‘To be a musician, one must have a better ear and more intelligence than any of you. Place yourselves any way you like; it will make no difference. You will never become musicians.’

fable ‘The Quartet’. The only serious change is putting Churchill in charge of the armed forces of Great Britain, although even here Chamberlain tried to put a spoke in his wheel (for instance, by appointing Samuel Hoare as secretary of state for air). This reshuffle actually satisfies nobody and has been criticized quite sharply both in the press and in the corridors of the House. In the evening, agriculture came up for discussion again in parliament. Lloyd George lambasted the government for neglecting this sphere and declared:

Another rapier thrust, and a very good one! The ‘rabbit jumps’ policy – no one could have made a more exact or more devastating two-word diagnosis of British government policy over recent years, particularly since Chamberlain came to power.