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Later at Downing Street, packed from end to end by a curious and curiously quiet crowd, the official talks began under strict wraps "to encourage Russian frankness." That night at No. 10, Prime Minister Eden gave a banquet, at which Britain's great appeared in "lounge suits" in deference to their guests' limited wardrobe. B. & K. came in voluminous gabardine topcoats over grey suits. But the hit of the evening was Sir Winston Churchill, pink and beaming at the old familiar door, waving a cigar and giving a V sign. Bulganin gave a jovial speech in which he obliquely compared Khrushchev to Churchill.
At breakfast next morning cops intercepted a letter for B. & K. It contained one snub-nosed bullet and a warning that "each of you will get one of these inside you." On the way to the Lord Mayor of London's luncheon, there were boos along the route. Said Khrushchev: "I'm not displeased. It shows some people have spirit."
Old Saws. At the Mansion House the elite of London's financial and industrial world was waiting to meet them. As they took their seats in the vast gold-columned Egyptian hall, they were serenaded by the Honorable Artillery Company band. Bulganin replied to toasts in a long, rambling speech which made the assembled capitalists fidget. When he quoted "an old Russian saying that Moscow was not built in a day," the hall rocked with laughter, without Bulganin having any idea what the joke was about.
That evening at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, as guests of the Admiralty, it was Khrushchev's turn to talk. The "only way out" of the present world situation, Khrushchev suggested, is "to give up war altogether" and "ultimately to abolish armed forces." Entering the college, B. & K. had been rudely greeted by a loudspeaker from across the river Thames: "Here come Marshal Bulganin and Khrushchev. They are here to destroy mankind and disrupt our Empire." The voice was that of a member of the League of Empire Loyalists which, earlier in the week, had presented Prime Minister Eden with a 10-ft.-long wooden spoon to illustrate an old—but non-Russian—saying: "He must have a long spoon who sups with the Devil."
Something had plainly changed in London since Georgy Malenkov's enthusiastic welcome only three weeks before. The pinpricks (or possibly worse) from disgruntled exiles and refugees (there are a quarter of a million Iron Curtain exiles in Britain) had been expected and discounted. But where were the lipstick-heavy shopgirls and the schoolchildren eager to be bemused by the roly-poly Russians? The subtle, artful labors of Foreign Office schedulemakers, hoping to keep B. & K. from public contact, had proved an unnecessary precaution.
London, which had taken Hitler's worst, could also take Khrushchev and Bulganin's best.