News about Margaret Rutherford

Back in 1944, despite the War, there was an enviable certainty to life as my mother helped fill Red Cross parcels for British prisoners of war. The parcels assembly line at St Peter's hospital, Chertsey, was organised by her great aunt May Bowen, a tiny but indomitable baronet's widow who resembled a miniature Margaret Rutherford. The dowager ran an efficient assembly line, and my mother, aged ten, had to stay alert in order to insert one Mars Bar into each box as it whooshed past her. Other objects in Red Cross parcels could include Nestle's dried milk, Lusty's collops (meat slices), Crosse & Blackwell herrings, Peek Frean biscuits, Marmite and a small drum of Player's Navy Cut cigarettes.