Even before he was giving his speeches, DW was making preparations for war and advising others to do the same.
In his column in the Sunday Graphic in early 1939 he encouraged his readers to lay in stores of emergency supplies while they were plentiful, against the day when they would be impossible to obtain.
He took his own advice and laid in supplies of luxury goods - cases of fine wines and tins of foie gras, with which he was to regale his friends throughout the coming war.
In the final days before war was declared, having returned from a final holiday in France, he set about building an air raid shelter for his home - getting wine merchants Justerini & Brooks to send him a supply of champagne cases he could fill with rubble to reinforce the walls.
On Sunday 3rd September 1939 at 11 in the morning, DW and his family sat in their drawing room and listened to Chamberlain's announcement that the country was again at war.
References :
'Stranger Than Fiction' Chapter 1.
'Drink and Ink' pp 156,159.
Phil Baker pp 380,385-6.
Craig Cabell Chapter 2.
