Foreign News: Coals to Victoria

“Anything to declare?” a customs officer asked the Hon. Mrs. Graham Lampson, just back from France, in London’s drafty Victoria Station one day last week. “Half a hundredweight [56 Ibs.] of coal,” she replied. And there it was, in her immaculate suitcase, each lump neatly wrapped in tissue paper. Mrs. Lampson, daughter-in-law of Baron Killearn, first British Ambassador to Egypt, explained that French friends, concerned over Britain’s critical fuel shortage, had given it to her so she could keep warm.