15
a dreamer, and definitely no one’s stereotype.^38 That she worked during
the Second World War for MOI is indisputable; that she also held the rank
of second secretary at the Baghdad embassy is also on record. However,
that these overt or semi-overt employment relationships actually con-
cealed a deeper level of covert activity, probably for SIS, dating back to the
1920s, is neither stated nor implied by any of Stark’s biographers.
Implausibly, they overlook the fact that MOI’s Middle East work origi-
nated with SIS—at Electra House (Department EH) in association with
Section D of MI6, which was ultimately absorbed by SO1 (later SOE).^39
It is as if the dismantled scaffolding of Freya Stark’s clandestine activity
had been left lying around in scattered pieces from which we are to induce
the integrated edifice that it once enclosed. What is missing of course—
what has been redacted—is the design that engendered the structure in
the first place. And that can only be inferred from Stark’s few mentions of
intelligence in her memoirs and in her correspondence, and from the few
existing archival records and durable friendships that testify to her covert
activity before and during the Second World War.^40
What rendered a scout’s activities all the more elusive was the informal
way in which s/he might be commissioned to undertake espionage activi-
ties while ostensibly busy with other matters. Consider how in 1939
Kinahan ‘Ken’ Cornwallis (1883–1959), then with the Political Intelligence
Department (PID) of the FO, approached Freya Stark in Aden with an
innocuous request so formulated that it more or less reduced espionage to
a casual social transaction: ‘The PID produces a weekly political intelli-
gence summary, and I am covering the whole of the Middle East,’
Cornwallis wrote to Stark from Whitehall. ‘It is of course a summary on
broad lines mentioning events as illustrating tendencies and developments
especially in relation to the war. ... You can help me a lot by letting me
know, as often as you like, how things are going in your part of the world.
... I see that the Imam^41 intends to maintain his neutrality, but he is an old
man, and life must be precarious in those parts. If you have any informa-
tion, could you let me know what may happen if he dies and a few notes
on the chief people concerned. ... I have no background for all this and
will be very grateful if you can supply it, and also anything else which you
may think from time to time might be useful to me.’^42 Though it in no
way resembled what we would today call a formal operational or tasking
order, Cornwallis’s letter had precisely that function—couched in
impromptu FO style. Eighteen months later, as Freya Stark came yet again
to her friend’s aid and began her propaganda mission in Iraq, it was once
PROLOGUE: OF SPIES, SCOUTS, AND COVER