The Meaning of Treason - Rebecca West

The Meaning of Treason was originally an account of the trial of William Joyce ('Lord Haw-Haw') in 1945. West sat through the entirety of his trial and appeals. Joyce's defence was a good one: you cannot betray a country you have never been a citizen of. And he had never been British. He was born in America to an Irish father; before he made any broadcasts he had been granted German citizenship. His downfall was, he had accepted a British passport to make his escape to Germany on the eve of World War II. You could argue, of course, that the British should have been more careful who they granted passports to, but it should be remembered that in September 1939 the Irish State was more of a potential danger to the UK than Germany was. In any event, Joyce hadn't committed treason in the sense of betraying secrets to the enemy, because he had never been important enough to have any. He had, without doubt, given comfort to the enemies of Britain by, for example, mocking Churchill and laughing at British defeats. But then how come Norman Baillie Stewart, who had served a sentence for betraying secrets before the war and who was the original Lord Haw-Haw only received a short custodial sentence when he was tried after Joyce had been hanged?

These were the questions West asked in her 1949 book. To the best of my recollection, she came down on the side of common sense. Joyce's trial was a kangaroo court and he wasn't guilty of treason. There were loads of offences he could have been tried for - obtaining a passport he wasn't entitled to was an obvious starting point - and no one would have batted an eyelid had he ended up serving a double-figure sentence of imprisonment.

By 1956 (this edition) West had mellowed. All the anchors of her original argument are still present but so are reams of waffle which she believes entitle her to have changed her mind. They don't. The real problem though is that in 1951 she agreed to add in an account of the atom spy Klaus Fuchs, and by extension his traitorous boss Alan Nunn May. They were undoubtedly guilty; neither man was executed, and both claimed a moral defence - that A-bomb technology was redundant so long as all major countries had access to it. For this further edition in 1956 she added Burgess and Maclean to the mix - paid, long-term Soviet spies whose only excuse was they were lifelong shits. As such, they of course did a runner to Moscow before they could be tried. Furthermore, as we all now know, they were only the tip of a considerable iceberg.

If you want to know about Joyce's trial, read the 1949 Meaning of Treason. Instead of trying to add in the next wave of traitors under what was inevitably a very broad brush, West would have been far better off writing separate volumes using the same technique.

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.

Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob - Francis Selwyn

I happened upon this series by accident but will purposefully seek out more.  Francis Selwyn is a pseudonym of Donald Thomas, poet, prolific author and Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Cardiff University.  His passion appears to be Victorian crime fiction, because as well as the Verity series he has written (as Thomas) the Inspector Swain series (The Ripper's Apprentice sounds right up my street) and currently produces pseudo-Sherlocks.  His latest, Death on a Pale Horse, is due out next month.  As Selwyn he wrote Hitler's Englishman: The Crime of Lord Haw-Haw (1987), which has long been part of my collection and is my go-to research book regarding William Joyce.  Also as Selwyn he produced a book on Neville Heath which I am now looking out for.

Meanwhile, back to Sergeant Verity.  Some might say it is redolent of Peter Lovesey's seminal Sergeant Cribb series, which certainly predate Verity.  I am a great admirer of Cribb, albeit not of Lovesey's later work.  But Selwyn is the more adventurous writer and I enjoyed this, the fifth of the series, for the off-the-wall undercurrent.  Villains with names like Old Mole, Stunning Joseph, and Sealskin Kite are always going to attract me, and I also enjoyed the fact that Verity - wholly unlike Cribb - isn't all that bright.  The chase on the Brighton Parliamentary I thought was superbly done, a complex scenario executed in a genuinely thrilling style.