With the exception of Greece, where British involvement in an ongoing civil war provoked furious controversy in parliament and media alike, the plight of Yugoslavia at the end of World War Two had greater resonance in Britain than that of other Balkan countries. The coup which deposed Prince Paul in March 1941 — like the later guerilla resistance, only in part British-engineered and only in part anti-German - had produced enormous enthusiasm in Britain at one of the lowest moments of the war. Such popular engagement with events in Yugoslavia was maintained by rosy media coverage first of Mihailovic’s activity in Serbia and then of Tito’s Partisan movement. During the years 1941 to 1945 Axis occupation, national resistance struggle, civil war, starvation and disease combined to leave some 1.7 million Yugoslavs dead. By 1945 a much larger number were homeless, cut-off and imperilled by the coming winter. In addition to well-publicised UNRRA relief work, the response from British charitable organisations like the Yugoslav Emergency Committee and the Yugoslav Relief Fund attracted wide support, belying subsequent suggestions of popular ‘compassion fatigue’.1