Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt's frail but influential adviser, arrived at 10 Downing Street on January 10 looking gravely ill and untidy, which startled Pamela Churchill and others. Brendan Bracken showed Hopkins the bomb-damaged house before Winston Churchill joined him for lunch. Hopkins quickly raised a sensitive issue by saying some Americans believed Churchill disliked America and Roosevelt; Churchill firmly denied it, blamed Joseph Kennedy for spreading that view, and then spent hours discussing Britain's military situation and needs with Hopkins.

As Churchill's party drove to Ditchley for the weekend, John Colville and Bracken talked about Hopkins's importance to Roosevelt and narrowly avoided disaster when their car hit a fish-and-chips wagon in the blackout. Colville's day was otherwise marked by personal pain: a lunch and gallery visit with Gay Margesson reminded him that he still loved her and suspected she favored Nicholas Henderson. His private disappointment underscored the contrast between the government's immense wartime burdens and the emotional lives continuing beneath them.

Meanwhile, Mary Churchill traveled from the countryside into a bomb-scarred London on her way to spend the weekend at Petworth. The altered city deepened her affection for London, and she briefly visited the family's new annexe above the Cabinet War Rooms, admiring how Clementine had made it livable. At Petworth, Mary found a large social gathering, judged some of the company affected, but enjoyed the dinner and ball, dancing late into the night even though she was becoming ill.

At Ditchley on Saturday night, Hopkins's importance became unmistakable. After an elegant candlelit dinner, Hopkins praised Churchill's speeches and gratified him by describing Roosevelt's attention to them. Churchill then launched into a sweeping statement of Britain's war aims and his vision of a freer postwar order; when he asked what Roosevelt would think, Hopkins first seemed dismissive, then made clear that America cared above all about defeating Hitler, a reply that relieved the room and confirmed a powerful alignment between the two governments.

While Churchill entertained Hopkins in the country, London endured another destructive raid, including a bomb strike at Bank Underground station that killed dozens and the loss of large stores of rationed food. On Sunday night Churchill kept Hopkins talking until dawn, and Hopkins afterward wrote Roosevelt that Britain urgently needed American help, that Churchill was the indispensable British leader, and that many in London expected invasion before May, possibly with poison gas. Churchill then drew Hopkins even closer by taking him north on the secret "eleven-thirty special," but Hopkins, unfamiliar with London, nearly missed the journey by going to Charing Cross instead of King's Cross.