Spy Fiction, Spy Films and Real Intelligence (Studies in Intelligence) by Wesley K. Wark

Author:Wesley K. Wark [Wark, Wesley K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2013-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

Notes

1. The original date of publication is given at the first mention of a book in the text. Unless otherwise indicated, place of publication is London and quotations are taken from the first edition.

2. The volume of Irish-related thrillers should not, however, be overstated. Myron J. Smith Jr., Cloak and Dagger Fiction: an Annotated Guide to Spy Thrillers (Santa Barbara and Oxford, 2nd edn, 1982) lists 3,435 books published between 1940 and early 1981. Of these barely 40 are Irish’.

3. Published in paperback as The Detling Murders (Harmondsworth, 1984).

4. Christopher Andrew, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (1985), pp.34–85; David French, ‘Spy Fever in Britain, 1900–1915’, The Historical Journal, Vol.21, No.2, (1978), pp.355–70.

5. R.D.B. French, ‘Introduction’, pp.xv-xvi, in George A. Birmingham, The Red Hand of Ulster (Shannon, 1972 edn).

6. Owen Dudley Edwards, The Quest for Sherlock Holmes: a Biographical Study of Arthur Conan Doyle (Edinburgh, 1983), pp.16, 135.

7. Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘His Last Bow: an Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes’, in His Last Bow (1962 edn), pp.191, 201–2.

8. Eunan O’Halpin, The Decline of the Union: British Government in Ireland, 1892–1920 (Dublin, 1987), pp.109–13.

9. Conan Doyle, ‘His Last Bow’, pp.198–9.

10. John Buchan, The Three Hostages (Harmondsworth, 1953 pbk edn), pp.48–50, 43, 103–9. Irish characters turn up in a couple of other novels by celebrated thriller writers. In Moon of Madness (1927), the creator of Fu Manchu, Sax Rohmer (Arthur S. Wade), recounted the story of ‘an Irish secret service agent and an American girl [who] track an international spy across Europe and into a death-fight in Madeira’. (Plot synopsis from Smith, Cloak and Dagger Fiction.) In Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (New York, 1939) one of General Sternwood’s daughters has married ex-IRA officer Rusty Regan, ‘a big curly-headed Irishman from Clonmel, with sad eyes and a smile as wide as Wilshire Boulevard’ (1971 pbk edn, p.8).

11. The Informer was made into a celebrated film (directed by John Ford, 1935) in which Victor McLaglan, in the title role, won an Academy Award.

12. J.J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1990), pp.221–70, gives a stimulating account of all aspects of Irish neutrality.

13. One novel mentions German activity in Ireland in the summer of 1939. In The Private Wound (1968) by Nicholas Blake (Cecil Day-Lewis), a romance and murder story set in the west of Ireland, one character who belongs to an extremist group of the IRA is involved in making contacts with Nazi agents. The Irish police, however, efficiently expose his activities and arrest him.

14. Eunan O’Halpin, ‘Intelligence and Security in Ireland, 1922–45’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol.5, No.1 (1990), pp.50–83.

15. Julian Symons, Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A History (London, 1972), p.126.

16. Peter Cheyney, Dark Duet (Harmondsworth, 1949 pbk edn), pp.136, 134, 131–54.

17. Dr Josephine Butler wrote Churchill’s Secret Agent: Code Name ‘Jay-Bee’ (1983), which she maintained was an account of her work as a wartime spy under the direct command of the Prime Minister. Her claims have been greeted with scepticism by intelligence veterans and by historians.

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