THE BIRMINGHAM DAILY GAZETTE

Birmingham, Warwickshire, England

19 July 1935

(page 6)

All for Lorne.

Marchioness Townsend quizzes “Mr. Chairman.”

Charles Peace in wax effigy presided at a lunch to-day. He was the one representative of the criminal at a Foyle gathering of police, detective story writers, and reviewers. He sat between the Marchioness Townshend, the chairman, and Mr. Aleister Crowley, and at one remove from Colonel Laurie, Assistant Commissioner of Police. At the same table were Superintendents Yandell, Hambrook and Askew, from Scotland Yard.

The situation, rich in comedy and in detective interest, was exactly like that of a Walter Hackett play featuring Marion Lorne, and Lady Townshend in her speech gave what I can only assume to be a deliberate impersonation of this actress. She never finished a sentence, dithered amusingly and got her points home with immense humour.

My neighbor asked me if she had ever been on the stage, but I assured him that as far as I knew her public appearances had been as Mayoress of King’s Lynn and her private occupations writing, poetry and musings.