Emma Soames (12:30)

'It wasn't easy being a Churchill child - and only Mary managed it with serenity and aplomb’ Sunday Telegraph

1939, and seventeen-year-old Mary found herself in an extraordinary position at an extraordinary time: the daughter of prime minister-in-waiting Winston Churchill, witnessing the outbreak of the Second World War. She was uniquely placed to observe this historic moment, and her diaries - most of which have never been published - provide a front-row view.

Having inherited Churchill's energy and determination, Mary joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1941 and served in one of the new "mixed" anti-aircraft batteries - a marked change from her privileged lifestyle to date.

Excitement of a different sort came from travelling abroad as her father's ADC - to blitzed cities, to Quebec and to Washington, and in July 1945 accompanying Winston to Potsdam for the summit with Truman and Stalin.

Her diaries, which give us an intimate portrait of her life alongside Churchill, have been edited by her daughter, the writer and broadcaster Emma Soames, who was 16 when her grandfather died.

In conversation with Fiona Armstrong

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