  Prior anticipated his arrival in England with mixed feelings. He had experienced the English at close quarters aboard the Ormonde: they ‘stink with Race Prejudice’, he wrote. His experiences on the boat had he said taught him that he liked ‘Americans better than Englishmen’—and ‘Australians better than New Zealanders’. It was in the early summer of 1938 that the couple crossed the English Channel and settled in London. Whether the reality was better or worse than Prior’s expectations is hard to say. He certainly found ‘abominable race-prejudice’, and politically there was also ‘plenty to disgust us’—as well as ‘the extraordinary backwardness of England as compared with N.Z.’.