“MacMillan seems to have taken the daily risks with a mixture of unflappability and almost enjoyment. He and the Ambassador insisted, as a matter of principle, on using the official study, remarking in his memoirs only that ‘bullets came through the window, but there was a corner in which one could sit without undue risk’. In fact the walls around the Ambassadors desk were pitted with bullet holes, and to reach it he and Leeper had to enter the room by a side door, then creep around the floor to reach their chairs out of sight of the snipers. During one conversation a bullet actually hit the wall two inches from MacMillan’s head; the two men stopped talking; the Minister Resident [MacMillan] silently edged his chair out of the line of fire, then resumed the conversation.”

Alistair Horne Harold MacMillan: Volume 1: 1894-1965 p235