The young nurse who had made her name as a pacifist writer with a best-selling memoir Testament of Youth (1933) had, by the start of the Second World War, also become a vocal practical pacifist who raised funds for the Peace Pledge Union, spoke at rallies, and wrote articles for the pacifist magazine Peace News. By writing ‘letters to peace lovers’ she put her reputation on the line with her opposition to saturation bombing and to the Government’s ‘unconditional surrender’ aim to end the war. She advocated the preservation of humanitarian values and gave a different perspective to momentous events such as Dunkirk, the German invasion of Russia, and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1945, her name was listed in the ‘Nazi Black Book’ of nearly 3,000 people to be arrested in Britain after a German invasion.