During the height of the Blitz, Winston Churchill finagled an invitation to spend weekends at Ditchley, the 300-year-old country house of Ronald Tree, a friend and fellow hater of Hitler, 75 miles outside London.
In requesting the open invitation, Churchill was bowing to his security people, who feared that Hitler would eventually target the prime minister for assassination if he spent every weekend at Chequers, his official country residence.
Tree, who invited Churchill to "use the house as your own," was a member of Parliament and richer than Croesus, having inherited a chunk of the $125 million estate of Chicago retailer Marshall Field.
In addition, Tree had married his cousin's widow, Nancy Field, and so acquired his late cousin's chunk of the estate, as well.
She had stuffed Ditchley with furniture, fabrics and art, all carefully arranged and orchestrated, and was thrilled on any weekend to showcase the house to Churchill and his family, guests, bodyguards, cronies, and staff.
Churchill was impressed, and for good cause.
Nancy's touch, which emphasized color, comfort, and informality, ran to every nook and cranny of the place.
Her aesthetic—labeled by one designer "humble elegance and pleasing decay"—would become legendary throughout England and the very model for the "country home interior," still a prevalent motif today.
Churchill loved the "large and charming" house and its over-the-top rooms so much that Ditchley became his second home—and home office.
He escaped to it from London throughout the Blitz, as described by Erik Larson in The Splendid and the Vile, staying for weekends which saw bouts of hard work interrupted by board games, dinners, garden strolls, and movies (the house had a home theater).
No slouch, Nancy leveraged her tastemaker's touch after the war, buying the London design firm Colefax & Fowler.
The firm specialized in country house décor, blending faded colors, chintzes and painted furniture and antiques in dreamy, romantic arrangements. Nancy turned it into a design powerhouse.
Referred to at her death in 1994 as the doyenne of interior decorators, Nancy was said to have "the finest taste of anyone in the world."
