Angela Hughes
Angela Hughes' father was the Irish-born musician and critic Herbert Hughes and her mother Suzanne McKernan of the Irish Players, an offshoot of Dublinís Abbey Theatre. They married in 1922 and moved to Chelsea where their home became a meeting-place for a brilliant circle of artists, writers and musicians who came to talk and to listen to music. Among the writers were James Joyce (with whom her father had a jokey and congenial friendship), George Russell ('AE'), James Stevens, J B Priestley and Sean O'Casey: the musicians, Arnold Bax and Harriet Cohen, E J Moeran, Arthur Bliss, the Harrison sisters and the Irish tenor, John McCormack.These evenings, recorded by Suzanne in her journal, give a unique flavour of the thirties as the Nazis were beginning to make themselves felt and the world was teetering on the edge of Churchill's 'stairway leading to a dark gulf'.