from the family scene altogether. The question of the twins' paternity remained unresolved. One suggested candidate was the writer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt; another was Blanche's brother-in-law, Lord Redesdale, grandfather of the future Mitford sisters. Nellie Hozier grew up in the family's various homes in Seaford on the English south coast, in Dieppe in France, and finally in Berkhamsted where she attended the Girls' High School with her elder sister Clementine. In September 1908, she acted as a bridesmaid at Clementine's wedding to Winston Churchill. At the beginning of the First World War in August 1914, Nellie volunteered as a nursing auxiliary in Belgium and was briefly a prisoner of war before repatriation at the end of the year. Back in England, she met an officer in the Scots Guards, Lieutenant-Colonel Bertram Henry Samuel Romilly, who had been seriously wounded while fighting in France. Romilly was from a distinguished landowning family with a long tradition of public service. The couple married in December 1915; their elder son Giles Samuel Bertram Romilly was born on 19 September 1916. The second son, Esmond, followed on 10 June 1918. Early life Esmond was born at No. 15 Pimlico Road, in a busy part of London close to Victoria Station. It was a comfortable upper-middle class lifestyle in which Nellie, rather than Colonel Romilly was the principal influence. Esmond followed his elder brother to school, first at Gibbs's Day School in nearby Sloane Street and then, from 1927, as a boarder at Newlands Preparatory School at Seaford. Holidays were divided between the family's property in Dieppe and the Churchill cousins' home at Chartwell, and the Romilly estates at Huntington Park in Herefordshire. Just before his ninth birthday, Esmond began at Newlands in the May 1927. It was a small school, with some forty-odd boys; Giles's later account, in which he disguises the school as "Seacliffe" and alters the names of the main personnel, depicts an easygoing and undemanding establishment run by an elderly and by now largely ineffective headmaster. Matters changed when in 1930 the headmaster and others of the old guard finally retired and were replaced by more vigorous and purposeful successors. By his own account, Esmond's academic prowess placed him at the top of the school, although in terms of behaviour he was one of the very worst. Nevertheless, by the time he left Newlands in 1932 he had managed to register a