At Maryborough House, thrown back to Britain's pre-plumbing era, lackeys heated cauldrons over the kitchen fire to provide warm bath water for Queen Mary. At the Admiralty and the War Office, civil servants ate their meals cold, and went home unwashed and inkstained. In the House of Commons, Winston Churchill rose to speak, swathed in a huge ulster that stretched nearly to the floor, his throat muffled in black wool. Declared Speaker Douglas Clifton-Brown: "I was unable to get a bath this morning myself."
It was all the fault of a week-long wildcat walkout...
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