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could easily lead to bickering over responsibilities and funding; however,
they were quite common among clandestine agencies and services, espe-
cially in the Middle East. While engendered partly by the large number of
competing and constantly changing formations in Cairo, such indefinite
allegiances of course facilitated deniability and density of cover, which were
of great importance.
While Adrian Bishop’s relatively fragile cover as an amoral indigent
lurching from one job to another, interspersed with brushes with the law,
may have distanced him effectively from any scouting role he may have
been assigned, such louche behaviour in itself placed him at considerable
risk of blackmail, arrest, interrogation, and exposure. By contrast, Freya
Stark’s virtually unbreakable cover as a celebrated writer and photographer
provided her with far greater security and easier access to the intelligence
she sought. In fact, by the time war came, such was Stark’s fame that she
was even able to enter remote northern Yemen as a tourist unchallenged,
and to complete a high-yield political-espionage/propaganda mission in
Sana’a without arousing any suspicion. Her success in her secret work
compounded her reputation, making her a covert celebrity too. Apart
from acquiring valuable political and military intelligence about Yemen for
MEIC in Cairo, Stark’s pro-British propaganda initiative during this visit
in February–March 1940 was so effective that she was subsequently cred-
ited with having single-handedly preserved Yemen’s neutrality for the
duration of the war.^61 But by now Freya Stark had become much more
than a mere scout, for the intelligence she was now acquiring was graded
top secret, and the risks she was running had become infinitely greater.
How had she come to so forbidding a city as Sana’a in the first place? How
had she been selected for a mission of such consequence? Perhaps somewhat
to her surprise, perhaps not, from the moment she arrived in Cairo in
October 1939 on her way to join Stewart Perowne in Aden as a civilian infor-
mation officer, because of her prewar achievements, most notably her car-
tography in Persia, Stark found herself accepted ‘behind the scenes’ as an
integral member of the military-intelligence community at a relatively senior
level. To the initiated, her membership of Section D of SIS would have pro-
vided what she would have called her ‘open sesame.’^62 The doors of some
very hush-hush organizations consequently flew open for her, and Stark
found herself hobnobbing secretly with red- tabbed rivals at Grey Pillars and
Rustum Buildings^63 like Walter ‘Bill’ Cawthorn (1896–1970) of MEIC;
Iltyd Clayton (1886–1955), the deputy director of military intelligence
(DDMI); and Cudbert Thornhill of SOE, together with her old friend