‘Woman No-One Understands’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31318, 14 March 1967, Page 2

‘Woman No-One Understands’

(N.Z. Brest Association-Copyright) LONDON, March 12. Sir Francis Chichester’s wife is the woman that no other woman understands, according to Pauline Peters in the “Sunday Times.”

Sir Francis Chichester was alone in a beat on the way to Cape Horn, and Lady Chichester said she had not had a moment’s worry, Miss Peters wrote. “What Fm most concerned about at the moment is the way people say he’s doing something dangerous. Rubbish,” Lady Chichester said. “Did you see that article where they said it could be over in a few minutes? Sensationalism. Tve crossed the Atlantic with him twice, so I know what he’s up against “I don’t think I really appreciated him until I did it He was completely in charge. We didn’t squabble at alt “We’ve been married 30 years so goodness knows we’ve had squabbles like everybody else. But some of our best times together have been in a boat” Lady Chichester said. Lady Chichester had just returned from a gruelling "holiday” in Australia, most of which she spent on Gipsy Moth IV packing provisions, the “Sunday Times” said. The couple had gone to bed early in Sydney when the telephone rang to tell her husband of his knighthood. “He put the ’phone down and he said he was pleased for me and I said I was pleased for him,” said Lady Chichester. "People have said he’s such a rebel, why didn’t he turn

it down. But I think that would have been very ungracious to the Queen.” Lady Chichester said she missed her husband's company when he was away. “But I like being by myself too. “He’s a larger-than-life figure, I suppose. When he's depressed, the whole house is under a cloud. He's a very demanding person to have around. “I met Francis one New Year’s Eve in Devon. He’d already decided to get off with me before he'd met because he’d heard so much about me from a man he didn’t like very much and thought Til spike your guns, chum.* “Then he must have genuinely fallen in love with me. We were married a few weeks later, February 23.”