Lord Dunglass

Lord Dunglass is a member of the Prime Minister’s party travelling to Munich and a perceptive observer of the conference’s tense surroundings. Presented as diffident and dryly humorous, he defends Chamberlain’s work to secure the meeting while remaining alert to small but consequential signs of activity around Hitler’s rooms.

Identity and Introduction

In the Private Office, Miss Watson regards Lord Dunglass as far more capable than his diffident manner suggests. She confidently predicts, “He will be Prime Minister one day, Mr Legat, mark my words, and you will remember that I was the first to say it.” The prediction is treated as implausible by the office: Dunglass is expected to inherit his father’s title and become the 14th Earl of Home, and the narrative observes that a modern prime minister sitting in the House of Lords seemed inconceivable.

The account sketches him through a thin, straight smile and a tight-lipped way of speaking, likened to someone practising ventriloquism. These restrained mannerisms suit his unobtrusive presence, but his observations show that he is not simply a passive member of the party.

The Journey to Munich

Lord Dunglass’s reason for joining the Prime Minister’s party is unclear even to Hugh Legat. The narration offers a practical possibility rather than a firm explanation: Dunglass was a friendly face, with a country house in Scotland and extensive fishing rights on the Tweed, qualities thought useful to the Prime Minister’s morale. On the journey, he rides beside Hugh Legat in the fourth car, after the official party has left Downing Street and travelled through Whitehall and around Parliament Square.

Their conversation turns to Winston Churchill’s criticism of the previous day’s speech. Churchill had approached the Prime Minister at the dispatch box amid the applause and told him that he had been lucky. Dunglass rejects that characterization: whatever objections might be made to Chamberlain’s policy, he argues, the conference was not a matter of luck, since Chamberlain had worked himself half to death to achieve it. He notices that Hugh Legat joined in the applause; Legat admits that he was meant to remain neutral but was carried along by the mood, which he thinks reflected the relief of most of the country.

Dunglass answers that even socialists had risen to applaud, then concludes, “It seems we are all appeasers now.” The remark registers the breadth of the public response without concealing the political label attached to the policy. His defense is specific: he credits Chamberlain’s effort, while leaving open the possibility that the policy itself is wrong.

At the Conference

Later, in a corridor near Hitler’s room, Dunglass cranes his neck to look along the passage. The narration compares the gesture to the mystified-looking birds he likes to shoot. When someone nearby asks whether something is happening, he reports that Hitler’s door is open. The moment shows his attentiveness in a setting where access and movement matter: he notices a change in the immediate scene and makes it known, without the text claiming what the open door will lead to.