A slightly ghoulish prospect looms today

A slightly ghoulish prospect looms today. Andrew & I bugger off to America for Jack Kennedy’s coronation — back Sunday I’m happy to say. I can’t tell you how queer it is getting a visa — they send you a jolly invitation from The President to his crowning & then proceed to ask you all sorts of cheeky questions & insist on seeing you to make sure you’re not a Communist. Well how can they know just by looking at one’s ugly mug. On one of the many forms was printed ORIGIN & the clerk wrote CAUCASIAN. I asked “Look here what’s that” & he said without a flicker of anything “Means you’re white.”

Deborah Devonshire Letter to Patrick Leigh Fermor 18th January 1961