The Gleaner

With her best friend Ann Stoker she would also hang around the Fleet at Portsmouth and Southsea. (A photograph of the two, both inexplicably in boiler suits, shows a hefty young Monica not displayed to best advantage next to the more petite Ann.) They had to avoid her brother Bunny if he was in port and likewise her Uncle Gerald, brother of Henry, who was captain of the battleship Repulse. With another friend she used to drive up to Oxford and Cambridge, a wind-up gramophone in the back of her…