This marriage eventually failed, and she started an affair with Adolf Placzek, a Viennese art historian 12 years her junior.
On the outbreak of war, this book became the basis for a patriotic American film, Mrs Miniver, released in 1942, which won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
An apocryphal story, attributed to fellow panelist Oscar Levant, tells that her appearances on the show stopped abruptly after she answered a question by referring to Agatha Christie's book Ten Little Niggers, which was the original British title of the book Ten Little Indians (later retitled And Then There Were None).
As well as the creation of the character Mrs Miniver in a fortnightly column in The Times, she is remembered for her hymns for children, including "Lord of All Hopefulness", "When a Knight Won His Spurs" and "Daisies are Our Silver".
[5] These resulted from an approach by Canon Percy Dearmer of Westminster Abbey, Words Editor of the enlarged edition of Songs of Praise published in 1931 by OUP.