June Spencer

Did you ever have it out with her?

Well, the third one is Chopin's Revolutionary Study.

I started music lessons, piano lessons, when I was six, and I loved playing, and I went on playing until I was about 15 or 16 when I had to stop practising my two hours a day because Mother couldn't stand the noise because she was lying up in bed.

I was never going to be a brilliant pianist, but I do love hearing piano played well, hence the Revolutionary Study.

Well, when the Germans marched into Poland, my mother and I were on holiday in the south of England somewhere.

My father drove down to collect us because the trains were full of little evacuees going off to, they didn't know where, their gas masks and their labels, their names...

No, not at all.

It saddened me very much.

I kept thinking of my boyfriends who would be called up and going, but I don't think there was any of the sort of gung-ho spirit there was in the First World War.

And when did you meet Roger?

When we were both 17, on holiday, in Chapel St Leonard's, which is a little village on the east coast near Skagenet, and my parents used to rent a bungalow for a month, and his parents used to rent a bungalow for a month, and that's how we met.

And when did you marry?

Not until 1942.

I had lots of other boyfriends and he had other girlfriends.

It wasn't until the war and he came home on leave that...

but he caught me in a weak moment and I said yes.

Because originally, when we were 17 on this holiday, I'd said to him rather loftily, I'll be your girlfriend for the duration of the holiday, but after that, finish.

I can't bear these holiday romances that peter out during the winter.

Married for 59 years.

Yes, it was.