Lady Avon remained in touch with many influential friends. For example, in the lead-up to the Falklands War of 1982, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, confided during a Cabinet meeting that the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had spoken to Lady Avon of the risk of a "socialist" regime being established in Argentina. Lady Avon also attended various state occasions, as well as gatherings of former Prime Ministers and their families. In 1972 (while her husband was still alive) she described to Cecil Beaton the Duchess of Windsor's "very strange" and nervous demeanour—"Is this my seat?" "Is this my prayer book?" "What do I do now?"—at the funeral of her husband, the former king Edward VIII, while thirty years later Tony Blair's press secretary Alastair Campbell noted that, at a dinner at 10 Downing Street in 2002 to mark Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee, attended by five Prime Ministers and several relatives of deceased Prime Ministers:Prince Philip was deep in conversation with TB[lair, the Countess of Avon, Macmillan's and Douglas-Home's families, and there was lots of reminiscing about life in Number 10.