88
continuing on its own lines ‘a little apart.’ Stark, Dust in the Lion’s Paw,
119.
- Appendix to MEIC Summary 564, 26 July 1941, WO 208/1560, TNA.
- Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark (New
York: Modern Library, 2001), 254.
- Not restricted to Italian POWs; SOE also applied the term as a codeword
(BONZO) to anti-Nazi German, Austrian, Russian, and Polish POWs who
were selected to be trained and sent back to German-occupied territory as
organizers, couriers, wireless operators, and saboteurs. See ‘Water Eaton
Manor’, SOE Group, 8 January 2019. The full text of Stark’s original pro-
posal, ‘Memorandum on Anti-Italian Propaganda in the Middle East,’ 15
August 1940, countersigned by Thornhill, is to be found at FO 898/110,
TNA. The document preserved at Kew is the copy received by Sir Iltyd
Clayton; the distribution list of 25 recipients is impressive and includes
every imaginable senior officer or diplomat with real or potential interest
in the matter. See also Thornhill to Stark, 25 August 1940, Container 23.5
(Cudbert Thornhill), Series II Correspondence, 1893–1985, Harry
Ransom Center, The University of Texas, Austin TX [HRC].
- Older brother of ‘James Bond’ creator Ian Fleming, Peter Fleming was a
Grenadier Guards officer who became an expert on special operations and
deception, serving in various war theatres, including the Middle East.
- This wasteful intelligence failure, caused in part by the poor quality and
morale of the prisoners themselves, has been analysed recently by Kent
Fedorowich; however, he does not acknowledge that the original mind
behind the scheme was Stark’s. See Kent Fedorowich, ‘“Toughs and
Thugs”: The Mazzini Society and Political Warfare among Italian POWs in
India, 1941–43’, Intelligence and National Security 20, no. 1 (March
2005): 151; Bob Moore and Kent Fedorowich, ‘Intelligence, Propaganda
and Political Warfare’, in The British Empire and Its Italian Prisoners of
War, 1940–1947 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 108. See also: Middle East
YAK Mission, March–April 1941, HS 3/197, TNA.
- Stark to Scaife, 22 December 1942, in Lucy Moorehead, ed., Freya Stark
Letters, vol. 4 (1940–1943) (Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1977), 258n119.
Quoted by Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya
Stark (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 301.
- Probably late 1943. ‘Apology for Propaganda’, Container 1.3 (Freya
Stark), Series I Works, 1916–1976, HRC. See also David Rahimi, ‘An
Apology for Propaganda’, Not Even Past, 2 November 2016, http://note-
venpast.org/Freya-starks-apology-for-propaganda/; Stark, Dust in the
Lion’s Paw, 62–8.
- Annotated draft, ‘Apology for Propaganda’, 1, Container 1.3 (Freya
Stark), Series I Works, 1916–1976, HRC.
ADRIAN O’SULLIVAN
