After the war, the Channel-tunnel project continued to languish in prewar fashion. If anything, even less than before was heard in the press about the activities of the Channel Tunnel Company. The company's headquarters at the Southern Railway offices at London Bridge were blown up in the blitz, and all the company's records were destroyed. For some time, while attempts were made to piece together duplicate lists from Government files, the Channel Tunnel Company didn't even know who the majority of its stockholders were, but that didn't matter too much, considering the circumstances. Baron Emile Beaumont d'Erlanger, the chairman, had died in 1939, and his place on the Board was taken by his nephew, Leo d'Erlanger, also a banker. Leo d'Erlanger, now a spry, elegant, silver-haired gentleman in his sixties, brightly confesses to having had little interest in the tunnel until about twelve years ago. "I was brought up in a home where the Channel tunnel was a family religion, and, to tell the truth, I didn't give it too much thought," he says. "My grandfather used to talk about it when I came back for the holidays from Eton. 'Politics,' they all used to say. 'The only reason why the tunnel isn't built is politics.' I never paid much attention. I thought it was an old dodo and never had anything to do with it in my Uncle Emile's lifetime. When he died and I took over, I used to look forward with dread to the annual general meetings. I had nothing to say. I considered the whole thing moribund. For a few years we met, I remember, at the Charing Cross Hotel, which belonged to the Southern Railway [a successor to Sir Edward Watkin's South-Eastern Railway], and the secretary was an elderly retired man by the name of Cramp, who once had something to do with the Southern Railway, I think. We used to have difficulty in getting a quorum. I suppose we would manage to get four or five people to turn up."