“Human Smoke” by Nicholson Baker is an eye-opening volume about the beginnings of WWII.
On page 419 we read how the commander of the Home Forces in England, Alan Brooke, dined with Churchill at his country house:
” ‘I told him of the fears I had of being very short of tanks if we went on sending them to Russia as proposed,’ wrote Brooke in his diary. A little after 2:00 A.M., Churchill wanted a sandwich. ‘I hoped that this might at least mean bed!’ Brook wrote. ‘But no!! He had the gramophone turned on and in his many coloured dressing gown, with a sandwich in one hand and water cress in the other, he trotted round and round the hall giving occasional little skips to the time of the gramophone. On each lap near the fireplace he stopped to release some priceless quotation or thought.’ ”
My question is, what was playing on the gramophone?