Those Wild Wyndhams: Three Sisters at the Heart of Power. Claudia Renton

a man who writes so lightly and well it is amazing how dull-witted he is.’⁴⁹ Judith was unacceptably mute at dinner while Pamela and Bosie played boisterous rhyming games. Blunt’s pen was most acidic about Balfour: ‘As a young man he must have been charming and still has some of the ways of a tame cat.’⁵⁰

      On the tennis court, a red-faced and ferocious Blunt, partnering George Wyndham, triumphed over a nonchalant Arthur and Guy Wyndham. That night at dinner, Balfour admitted, to Blunt’s astonishment, that Home Rule was inevitable: that his party’s coercion was merely stalling. ‘When it comes I shall not be sorry,’ Arthur told the assembled party. ‘Only let us have separation as well as Home Rule; England cannot afford to go on with Irishmen in her Parliament. She must govern herself too.’⁵¹