lunching at London's Savoy Grill with the Duke of Westminster. She recalls: when he [the Duke of Westminster] added that Hitler knew after all that we were his best friends, he set off the powder-magazine. "I hope," Duff spat, "that by tomorrow he will know that we are his most implacable and remorseless enemies". Next day "Bendor", telephoning to a friend, said that if there was a war it would be entirely due to the Jews and Duff Cooper. The Duke, known for his pro-German sympathies, was reportedly instrumental in influencing his former mistress, Coco Chanel, to use her association with Winston Churchill to broker a bilateral peace agreement between the British and the Nazis. In late 1943 or early 1944, Chanel and her current lover, Nazi espionage agent Baron Hans Gunther von Dinklage, undertook such an assignment. Codenamed "Operation Modellhut", it was an attempt through the British Embassy in Madrid, via Chanel, to influence Churchill, and thereby persuade the British to negotiate a separate peace with Germany. This mission as planned ultimately met with failure, as Churchill had no interest. Marriages and issue The duke married four times and was divorced three times. His first marriage was held on 16 February 1901, when he married Constance Edwina (Shelagh) Cornwallis-West (1876–1970). In 1909, when the couple's only son died in the absence of his mother, the duke accused his wife of neglecting the child while dallying with other men. By 1913, the couple were living apart, and both of them were consorting with lovers. Their divorce was finalized on 19 Dec 1919, with the duke solely accepting blame for adultery and paying his wife a settlement of 13,000 pounds, the largest in history to that date. Less than one month after the divorce, the supposedly innocent duchess married a much younger man who was an employee of the duke. The divorced couple maintained cordiality lifelong, even co-hosting debutante balls for their daughters; neither of them had children by their subsequent marriages. They had three children together: Lady Ursula Mary Olivia Grosvenor (21 February 1902 – 1978), married, firstly, William Patrick Filmer-Sankey in 1924 and was divorced in 1940. She married, secondly, Major Stephen Vernon in 1940. By her first husband, she had two sons, Patrick (who married the film actress Josephine Griffin) and Christopher Filmer-Sankey, who died during her lifetime. Her only child by her second husband died young. Lady