Hugh, first Baron Dowding

H. D. first met, after an eighteen-month correspondence, with Hugh, Lord Dowding , who had headed the RAF 's Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain and was now an active spiritualist and theosophist.

This vision led to a break between her and Lord Dowding . Always a dogmatic and authoritarian man, he discounted her vision, refusing to allow it the authority of his own seances, which in February...

Both HD's horror over the war and her rejection by Dowding were factors in this collapse, though she had a history of mental breakdowns going back to her college days. This latest breakdown came when...