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Top left: stamp-like row of x's, printed/typed filler: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx / xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
London, 23 November, 1944.
My dear friend,
I have replied to your official letter and thank you again for the arrangement made by your department.
I think with great pleasure of the week spent at your home and on that charming island that I love so much. Your hospitality was so cordial, and I hope to be able one day to welcome you to our home. Alas, our house at St.Gemmain was terribly looted. I have just returned from Paris. Everything was carried off by the Germans or systematically destroyed, except a few large pieces of furniture. Half of my library was burnt in the heating stove by the Gestapo, who had occupied the house since 1943, after a German general had lived there since 1940. All the English books were systematically destroyed, so yours too! I will not forget this when I meet the Germans again after the war. Rugs, paintings, our embroideries from Cyprus - everything is gone.
But we are going to rebuild and return to excavate; and it will be wonderful to resume scientific activity.
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain