Editing Joyce Grenfell (section)

===Early career===
In the late 1930s Grenfell contributed verses to ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'' and helped to entertain her aunt's guests at Cliveden. After one lunch, [[James Louis Garvin|J. L. Garvin]], the editor of ''[[The Observer]]'', engaged her as the paper's first radio critic.<ref name=h95>Hampton (2003), p. 95</ref> At an informal supper given by the [[BBC]] producer [[Stephen Potter]] in January 1939, she agreed to his request to entertain her fellow guests with a monologue of her own devising. This was "Useful and Acceptable Gifts", in which she played a gauche lecturer at a meeting of the [[Women's Institute]].<ref>Hampton (2002), p. xi</ref> The impresario [[Herbert Farjeon]] was among the guests and he invited her to perform the piece in his forthcoming [[revue]] at the [[Little Theatre in the Adelphi|Little Theatre]], London.<ref name=h95/> She was an immediate success, winning glowing notices. ''[[The Stage]]'' judged her "outstanding ... this clever diseuse successfully catches the naif manner of an amateur speaker lecturing on 'useful and acceptable gifts', and gives us a neat and satirical impersonation of an American mother listening to her small daughter reciting Shelley's 'Ode to a Skylark'".<ref>"The Little", ''The Stage'', 27 April 1939, p. 10</ref> ''[[Tatler|The Tatler]]'' found her two monologues "quite the best items in the programme".<ref>"Bubble and Squeak", "The Tatler", 10 May 1939, p. 270</ref> ''[[The Sketch]]'' devoted a full page to photographs of her in her different characters.<ref>Amateur Imitator in The Little Revue – Miss Joyce Grenfell", ''The Sketch'', 31 May 1939, p. 445</ref> ''[[Bystander (magazine)|The Bystander]]'' thought that Grenfell challenged the celebrated Ruth Draper "on her own pitch ... carry[ing] off the acting honours of this gay and intelligent entertainment."<ref>"The Theatre", ''The Bystander'', 10 May 1939, p. 213</ref>

During the [[Second World War]] Grenfell wrote for and appeared in three more [[West End theatre|West End]] revues: ''Diversion'' and ''Diversion No. 2'' at [[Wyndham's Theatre]] in 1940 and 1941, and ''Light and Shade'' at the [[Ambassadors Theatre (London)|Ambassadors]] in 1942.<ref name=who>Herbert, pp. 863–864</ref> In early 1942 she met the composer [[Richard Addinsell]]. Together they wrote many successful songs including "I'm Going to See You Today" and "Turn Back the Clock", which, in the words of the biographer Janie Hampton, "aptly caught the public mood".<ref name=h95/>

In 1941 Grenfell appeared in her first film role, as the American mother in [[Carol Reed]]'s short documentary ''[[A Letter from Home (film)|A Letter from Home]]''. She made three more films during the war.<ref name=bfi>[https://web.archive.org/web/20180408022336/http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b9f476194 "Joyce Grenfell"], British Film Institute. Retrieved 22 September 2021</ref> For BBC radio, together with Potter, she wrote and starred in an occasional radio series called ''How to …'', which ran intermittently from 1943 until 1962 offering humorous advice on how (and how not) to do things.{{refn|The ''How to'' series covered how to – among other things – talk to children (from which Grenfell's later Nursery School sketches grew), give a party, keep a diary, woo, blow your own trumpet, be good at music, make friends, deal with Christmas, move house, listen, appreciate Shakespeare, be good at games (drawing on Potter's 1947 book ''[[Gamesmanship]]''), broadcast, lead a really full life, cross the Atlantic first class, and know America really well.<ref>[https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=first&q=%22Joyce+Grenfell%22+AND+%22How+to%22#top "Joyce Grenfell – How to"], BBC Genome. Retrieved 23 September 2021</ref>|group=n}} In 1943 she made her only attempt at acting in a stage play: she resigned from the cast of a West End production of the American comedy ''[[Junior Miss]]'' after the first three days of rehearsal,<ref>Grenfell (1976), p. 235</ref> finding that onstage she could only perform looking straight at an audience, and could not "act sideways",<ref name=h96>Hampton (2003), p. 96</ref> although she found some film acting roles "fun to do".<ref>Grenfell (1976), p. 245</ref>

In the later years of the war Grenfell toured in the UK for [[ENSA]], sometimes with Addinsell accompanying her at the piano.<ref>Hampton (2002), pp. 182–183</ref> In late 1943 the head of ENSA, [[Basil Dean]], invited the two to tour troop camps and hospitals in North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. Addinsell's health was too fragile to permit him to accept, and Grenfell recruited Viola Tunnard, later better known as a close colleague of [[Benjamin Britten]].<ref>Hampton (2002), pp. 191–192; and "Viola Tunnard", ''The Times'', 24 July 1974, p. 18</ref> In 1944 and 1945 they performed in Algeria, Malta, Sicily, Italy, Iran, Iraq, India and Egypt.<ref name=who/>