Hitler's British Traitors - Tim Tate

The Secret History of Spies, Saboteurs and Fifth Columnists - so says the sub-title, and that is exactly what we get, to an extent I have never come across in what is now forty years of sporadic research on the subject. Never before have I seen it spelled out just how dangerous the relevant Duke of Bedford was. Never before has it been made so absolutely clear that only ordinary people paid any meaningful price for their treachery. The rich, the landed, those with friends in high places, simply went through the motions of punishment.

In some ways I wish Tate had included a critique on the trial and hanging of William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw. But I understand entirely why he didn't. Joyce wasn't ever a British citizen. He could not be a traitor to a country he never owed allegiance too, and his trial was a legal nonsense with lethal outcomes.

Tate is very good on the case of Sir Barry Domvile, the former head of naval intelligence, who may well have been the greatest Nazi danger to the UK. I have read Domvile's account and that of Sir Archibald Maule-Ramsay, the MP who formed the Right Club to keep British Nazism going after other Fascist groups closed down on the declaration of war. Ramsay was mad - even by the aristocratic standards of his day, obviously deranged - whereas Domvile was evil. Both were interned under Section 18b of the Defence Regulations. Neither was stripped of rank or title. The Duke of Bedford, who was prepared to finance and Nazi coup in Britain, wasn't even interned.

A scorching read, thoroughly recommended.

The Man Who Was M - Anthony Masters

The subtitle of this minor classic from 1986 is "The Life real-life spymaster who inspired Ian Fleming". Well, we all need a hook, but the connection is wafer thin.  For one thing Maxwell Knight was never a field agent and never travelled the world in the hunt for foreign agents.  Max was strictly London-based and spent his MI5 career bringing down the enemy within, be it Percy Glading, communist co-ordinator of the Woolwich Arsenal spy ring of 1938 or the highly-connected Fascists of the Right Club two years later. In both instances Knight infiltrated glamorous young women agents (Olga Gray and Joan Miller respectively) whilst he stayed secluded in his flat in Dolphin Square.with his menagerie of snakes and aye-ayes and bugs.

It's not just the wildlife that distinguishes Knight from James Bond, it's also the sex life. Not only did Knight never have sex with Gray or Miller, albeit both were in love with him and the latter even lived with him, he was married three times and never consummated any of the unions. Knight was frankly weird. Masters ponders his subject's sexuality but of course cannot come up with a conclusion.

After the war Knight became, of all things, a freelance broadcaster on natural history with the BBC. Indeed it was as the much-loved Uncle Max, author of books for children such as The Young Naturalist's Field Guide (1952) that he was memorialised when he died in 1968.

Masters' account of the Right Club is a good as any.  His rendering of the Woolwich Arsenal case is better than most and I had never before across the case of Ben Greene, cousin of Graham and (Sir) Hugh, which ultimately ruined Knight's standing in spy-circles, although I suppose there are worse things than being ostracised by an MI5 run by the likes of Burgess, Maclean, Blunt and Hollis. Masters spoke to people who knew Knight, including his two surviving wives, who can of course never be asked again.  The only trouble is, he says that Knight was 68 when he died.  No he wasn't; he was born in September 1900 and died in January 1968. He was therefore 67. A minor slip, perhaps, but it undermines confidence.  That's why I called it a minor classic. A bit more care and The Man Who Was M might just be a classic.

The Windsor Faction - D J Taylor

It's an alternate history: Wallis Simpson has conveniently died and Edward VIII thus has no reason to abdicate.  Hitler, of course, still invades Poland and we still go to war.  The twist is that Edward, the Hitler fan, becomes the puppet of the Peace Faction led by Captain Ramsay, the Tory MP for whom section 18b of the Defence Regulations was invented.

Ramsay, for the avoidance of doubt, was so fervently pro-Nazi that he undoubtedly committed treason. The American Embassy cipher clerk Tyler Kent is also real and also a traitor.  Most other characters here are fictional. Beverley Nichols, however, is a very surprising real person to include here, as the author of a heavily nuanced pro-peace King's Speech 1939.  The storyline is, of course, fictional, yet it ends up pretty much as happened in reality, with Ramsay interned for the duration. The odd thing is that the real MI5 agents who trapped him are much more interesting than the fictional Special Branch operatives who pursue him here.

It used to be forbidden in the UK to mention the Right Club (Ramsay's subversive Nazi group) but John Major, of all people, lifted the ban in the early Nineties, so I can't see why Taylor felt the need to invent in this aspect.  The King, indisputably a cracking idea, doesn't really amount to much: Edward was a weak, vain man who would probably have ended the monarchy.  He was passive in life and, unfortunately, he is a nonentity in this story.  The characters who really leap off the page are our heroine Cynthia (and her colonial parents) and, of all people, Beverley Nichols, who was known in my youth for writing in ladies' magazines about flowers.

Taylor switches tense and voice for the various storylines.  Nichols shines because Taylor creates a journal for him.  Cynthia is mainly third person traditional narrative, and the machinations tend to be present tense.

Yes, the novel has faults, but it is driven by sheer imaginative force.  Taylor, whose work I have not read before, writes with both depth and breadth.  He never loses impetus or conviction and there are passages so witty that I laughed out loud, which doesn't happen often.  I am very keen to read more of his fiction.