In April 1956 Lady Avon hosted a dinner at Chequers for the visiting Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin. Khrushchev noted that Lady Avon's (sober) behaviour contradicted briefing from the Soviet Embassy in London that she shared some of Winston Churchill's "traits in the matter of drinking". Over dinner (when, according to his hostess, he ate nothing despite his reputation for eating and drinking greedily), he responded rather bluntly to her question about the range of Soviet missiles that "they could easily reach your island and quite a bit farther". The following morning Khrushchev mistook Lady Avon's room for Bulganin's but, having provoked a cry after almost walking in on her, beat a hasty retreat and did not identify himself. He confided later in Bulganin with whom he "had a good laugh over the incident".