Page 52 Daily Mail, Friday, September 6, 2019
FRIDAY
BOOK OF
THE WEEK
NICK RENNISON
THE WALLS HAVE EARS:
THE GREATEST INTELLIGENCE
OPERATION OF WORLD WAR II
by Helen Fry (Yale £18.99, 320 pp)What a difference a year
makes... this time last year,
theresa May was in No 10 battling
over Brexit; on September 30, she
will be the star turn at the henley
Literary Festival in Oxfordshire.
the former prime minister, whose
Maidenhead constituency borders
henley, will be talking to Olympic gold
medallist rower Katherine Grainger about
the books that shaped her life on the way
to Downing Street. Mrs May is a regular
visitor to henley — ironically Boris
Johnson’s old seat — and one of her
favourite haunts is the Bell Bookshop,
which is a partner of the literary festival.
Now in its 13th year, this is the biggest
festival yet, with 170 events to ignite the
imaginations of adults and children alike.
Supported by the Daily Mail, the festival
runs from Saturday, September 28 to
Sunday, October 6, and will welcomesome of the biggest names in writing,
entertainment and sport, including Paul
Merton, Michael Parkinson, alastair Cook,
Prue Leith, Melvyn Bragg, Nadiya hussain,
Jojo Moyes and David Nicholls.
the Mail’s Robert hardman will talk
about his latest book, Queen Of the World,
while the Festival’s chosen charity Smart
Works (which is supported by the Duchess
of Sussex) will be hosting a panel on
redefining modern womanhood with
broadcasters Emma Barnett and ShahidhaBari and entrepreneur Jessica huie MBE.
Meanwhile, chic countryside website the
Muddy Stilettos Book Club is back with
actress and Celebrity MasterChef winner
Lisa Faulkner, novelist Ella Dove and
journalist Lotte Jeffs.
Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark will
discuss her latest novel, the house By the
Loch — a story about the complexity of
family life. the theme of families in fiction
will also be explored by novelists hannah
Beckerman, harriet Evans and Blue Peter
presenter-turned-writer Janet Ellis.
Countryfile host and broadcasting
legend John Craven, Soft Cell’s Dave Ball
and cricketers Monty Panesar, Vic Marks
and Derek Pringle will be talking about
their autobiographies. Steph Booth will
be discussing her moving account of living
with her husband tony Booth, till Death
Us Do Part actor and father-in-law of
tony Blair, as he battled alzheimer’s.
Children are well catered for, with moreIN 1620, the Pilgrims — English Puritans seeking
religious freedom — sailed from Plymouth to
America on board the Mayflower.
Three hundred and thirty-seven years later,
a group of young men set out to repeat the
voyage on a replica of the original ship.
They called themselves the 50/50 Club, taking
the name from an incident involving a Daily
Mail reporter who had the temerity to suggest
that Mayflower II had only a 50/50 chance of
making it across the Atlantic. The crew ‘threw
a sack over him, bound him to the foc’s’le
doorpost and doused him with dishwater’.
One of the 50/50 Club members in 1957
was Peter Padfield, now in his late 80s and
a distinguished naval historian. During the
‘life-changing’ experience, he kept a diary
that he sent back home to his mother, now
published in this slim volume.
The idea of the voyage was conceived
by British entrepreneur Warwick Charlton,
who had served in World War II and wanted
an eye-catching way of thanking the U.S.
for coming in
on Britain’s side.
The plan was
for the trip to
be as close to
the original
as possible —
there would be
no squadron
of back-up
vessels, no air-
lifts of supplies,
no radar and
only the wind
for power. The
one concession
to modernity
was a radio. The
crew were even persuaded to don Pilgrim
clothing at regular Sunday services, though
few enjoyed the ‘fancy dress’.
Padfield’s diary, which was written, as
he tells his mother, ‘in great haste, on a
table... tilting with the unpredictable rolling
of the ship’, retains its freshness 62 years
later. He describes the exhilaration of
‘swaying wildly’ in the rigging and ‘hanging
on to the best available rope with the wind
whistling about your face and clothes... I
quite forgot to be scared stiff’.
Seasickness was an ongoing problem,
even up in the rigging, where the sick flew
‘in aerodynamic curves over the foresail’ as
the crew strove to do their duty in trying
circumstances. One man always took his
turn at the wheel with a saucepan strapped
to his waist, into which he could throw up
if necessary.
Amid all this, there was also great beauty.
Padfield writes vividly of the glorious sunsets
at sea: ‘Blazes of gold turning to flame orange
and red and tipping receding layers of jag-
gedly topped cumulus clouds in concentric
parallels for hundreds of miles down to the
horizon of bright, steel-blue sea.’
The voyage of Mayflower II (pictured) was
a big news story at the time. A large flotilla
of dinghies, yachts and motorboats accompa-
nied the ship as it sailed out of Plymouth at
the start of its journey. As it neared America,
aircraft circled it in welcome.
Today, the successful transatlantic crossing
of the 50/50 Club is mostly forgotten, but it
deserves to be remembered — and Padfield’s
slight, but charming, diary brings it to life.
NICK RENNISON
Saucepans
at the ready
when the
Mayf lower
sailed again
MAYFLOWER II DIARY:
SKETCHES FROM A LOST AGE
by Peter Padfield (Casa Forte £16.95, 129 pp)D
URiNG World War ii,
captured German
generals and other
senior officers were
taken to trent Park, a
mansion house in North London.
On arrival, they were greeted by a
one-legged Scottish aristocrat named
Lord aberfeldy. he was, he told them,
their welfare officer and a second cousin
of the king, who was very concerned that
they should be treated well.
But this was all an elaborate charade.
aberfeldy was no royal relative — he was
an intelligence officer called ian Munro,
who also happened to be a very good
actor. (indeed, so enthusiastically did he
throw himself into this role that, accord-
ing to a colleague, ‘he became too grand
to talk to any of us’ and ‘expected order-
lies to address him as Your Lordship’.)
his job was to butter up the generals
and keep them happy. While aberfeldy
flattered them and brought them treats,
they were less likely to notice what was
unusual about trent Park, which was that
everything that could be bugged was.
hidden microphones were everywhere:
in the light fittings, in the fireplaces,
under the floorboards in the generals’
bedrooms. there were even some hung in
the trees in the grounds. the whole place
was wired for sound and, in rooms hidden
from view, secret listeners tuned in to
everything the Germans said.
this was one of the most effective
intelligence operations of the war, yet
probably the least known. its records
have been declassified only over the past
20 years, and helen Fry’s remarkable book
throws new light on its workings.
it was run by thomas Joseph Kendrick,
a man with 30 years’ worth of experience
in the secret services behind him.W
hiLE working as a
British passport officer
in 1938, he became the
‘Oskar Schindler of
Vienna’, arranging for hundreds of Jews
to leave austria after the Nazi takeover.
he was arrested, interrogated by the
Gestapo and expelled from the country
for espionage.
Returning to London, he was the ideal
commander for a new unit setting up a
special bugging operation in the tower
of London. When war was declared, and
the first German prisoners of war (PoWs)
arrived — mostly Luftwaffe pilots and
U-boat officers — Kendrick was ready.
Early results were promising, although,very occasionally, one of the shrewder
prisoners became suspicious. Wilhelm
Meyer, a pilot shot down over the thames
in November 1939, asked a cellmate: ‘Do
you think listening apparatus are built
in here?’ But even Meyer finally decided
he was being over-cautious.
Most were blithely unsuspecting as
Kendrick’s team recorded every word
they said.
as the war went on, and more and
more PoWs arrived, Kendrick expanded
his work. three more sites, including
trent Park, were fitted with cutting-edgerecording technology shipped over from
the Radio Corporation of america in
New York. With allied victories in North
africa, more senior German officers were
taken captive. (there was, of course, a
huge influx of high-ranking Wehrmacht
personnel after D-Day.)
as operations grew, Kendrick needed
extra listeners. his interview techniques
could be terrifying for candidates.
he once handed a would-be recruit a
pistol across his desk. ‘if you ever betray
anything about this work,’ he said, ‘here is
the gun with which i expect you to do theIn an intelligence sting to rival
Bletchley Park, this brilliant British
colonel took captured German
generals to The Ritz, bugged their
cells, planted spies among them
— and promised to shoot any of his
agents who let the cat out of the bag
Picture: PA
Theresa May’s the hot