Hugh, first Baron Dowding

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...

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...