© The Author(s) 2019 245
A. O’Sullivan, The Baghdad Set,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15183-6_11
CHAPTER 11
Epilogue: The Baghdad Set
The war and the prewar days seem miles away, and here we are
waiting for something else to happen, a new fashion of thought, a new
idiom ... settling down and yet not settling down, queuing up for a
show which we’re not at all certain about and wondering whether it’s
going to turn out to be grand opera, variety, ballet, straight play, or
farce.
—Aidan PhilipThis book has been mostly about human intelligence (HUMINT) and
about the essentially social nature of twentieth-century covert operations.
It has been about what some British professionals and their American
‘cousins’—all trained observers and operatives—saw and did in a distant
desert land some 70 years ago. They were far from home and suffered ter-
ribly from the heat, but they were supported and sustained by a sense of
social community that transcended national borders, alien cultures, and
vast distances. These few members of the Baghdad Set exhibited a defin-
able connectedness rooted in shared reference points: humane values,
social class, similar education, a strong sense of duty, a hatred of fascism,
Philip to Stark, 10 September 1946, Container 20.5 (Aidan Philip), Series II
Correspondence, 1893–1985, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas,
Austin, TX [HRC].