On May 10, 1940, seventeen-year-old Mary Churchill wakes to news that Germany has attacked Holland and Belgium. The shock is sharpened by contrast: while Europe was being invaded, Mary had spent the previous night at a birthday dinner for her friend Judith Montagu and then dancing in London clubs. The chapter sketches Mary’s family background, her buoyant personality, and the way privileged young Londoners continued to dine, dance, and serve in wartime roles even as the war darkened around them.

Mary’s evening centers on a handsome young army officer, Mark Howard, with whom she dances at the Savoy and later at the 400 Club until four in the morning. After learning of the new German offensive, Mary goes to Queen’s College, where anxiety over the military crisis merges with uncertainty about the fate of Neville Chamberlain’s government. The chapter shows Mary becoming aware that national politics, not just battlefield events, are about to change.

That Friday afternoon Mary goes to Chartwell, where she spends the evening at the cottage of her former nanny, Maryott Whyte. Listening to the radio just before the BBC news, Mary hears Chamberlain announce his resignation and that Winston Churchill is now prime minister. Mary is thrilled by the news, revealing the family’s pride and her faith in her father at the moment he assumes power.

The narrative then shifts to John Jock Colville, the twenty-five-year-old assistant private secretary who had been serving Chamberlain and is now reassigned to Churchill. Though well connected, intelligent, and observant, Colville fears Churchill’s temperament and expects confusion, rash action, and personal upheaval in his new post. His private diary records the unease spreading through Whitehall, where many officials see Churchill as energetic but dangerously impulsive.

That skepticism extends upward. King George VI confides that he cannot yet think of Churchill as prime minister and tells Halifax he is sorry not to have him in the role; Halifax himself worries Churchill will lead Britain into reckless action. Yet the chapter ends by balancing elite distrust with wider enthusiasm: ordinary citizens and Churchill’s allies send congratulations, and admirers such as Violet Bonham Carter and Venetia Stanley hail Churchill’s accession as the nation’s best hope in a gathering storm.