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PART 3

The Coventry Evening Telegraph and The Evening News referred to Harry’s visit to London in February 1942 when he attended a lunch to speak on the problems of Coventry’s redevelopment.

The Coventry Evening Telegraph: 6th February 1942:
‘According to gossip writers in the London press, Councillor Harry Weston, lively, ever-cheerful, wise-cracking Chairman of the Coventry Housing Committee, created an excellent impression when he spoke at last week’s lunch party in London. Harry Weston had been invited by Captain Strickland M.P. to talk on housing reconstruction problems at ‘an informal lunch’. I thought it was going to be a little party to chat over things with a snack of bread, cheese and pickles and a pipe of “baccy”. But when I found it was a full dress luncheon party in one of the biggest hotels with a company of seventy five, including Ministers of the Crown, MPs, building technicians and a battery of London Press men, and I was the chief speaker, I nearly threw a fit.’

I doubt if Harry Weston had any real nervousness of the occasion, however elaborate it might have appeared, but he said he recovered with the thought of such important personages being willing to sit and listen to an unknown provincial.

His unaffected speech on a problem that is nationwide was apparently so perfectly balanced with facts, ideas, humour and sentimentality, that the ‘provincial lamb’ almost immediately became the ‘London Lion.’

The Evening News 6th February 1942:
‘If Mr Weston were not so enthusiastic and keen about Coventry’s future, he could easily become a first class, nimble-witted comedian.’

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