Freya Stark, Dust in the Lion’s Paw: Autobiography 1939–1946 (London:
John Murray, 1962), 77.
Richard Bassett, ‘Erich Vermehren: German Defector to the British, 1944
(Obituary)’, The Independent, 3 May 2005. For the life of Von Trott zu
Solz, who, like his cousin, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, see Robert
S. Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (London: Routledge, 2002),
262–3.
Of course, I exempt from this argument the exceptional number of suc-
cessful films about Holocaust modalities (like Schindler’s List [Steven
Spielberg, 1993] and Conspiracy [Frank Pierson, 2001]); and about vari-
ous forms of secret resistance both within the Reich (like Valkyrie [Bryan
Singer, 2008] or Die weisse Rose [Michael Verhoeven, 1982]) or elsewhere
(like the extraordinary number of authentic films made about Operation
ANTHROPOID, including three in the last seven years: Lidice [Petr
Nikolaev, 2011], Anthropoid [Sean Ellis, 2016], and HHhH [Cédric
Jimenez, 2017]).
Lloyd, The Interval, 84–5. Hodgkin was also the nephew of Sir Reader
Bullard, the wartime British ambassador to Persia, who was married to one
of A.L Smith’s daughters. Bullard knew Freya Stark quite well, but he was
one of the few eminent men she encountered whom she failed to beguile.
Clive, Greek Experience, 20–1, 29–30.
This is all documented in Philip’s SOE P/F at HS 9/1181/4, The
National Archives, Kew, Surrey [TNA], from which we know that he was
originally destined for Tehran but was diverted to Baghdad, probably at
Bishop’s insistence and despite strong objections from SOE Tehran. It is
also stated in the file that Philip was already working in early 1941 in ‘some
form of intelligence job in the Middle East’ (the vagueness suggests SIS,
presumably Section D).
Another shared point of reference for some men of the Baghdad Set was
their sexuality. According to various sources, a significant number of
unmarried diplomats and intelligence officers in wartime Iraq—and even
the Regent and the ex-Mufti—were gay, described variously by such
euphemistic code-adjectives as ‘flamboyant’ or ‘epicene.’ Though this
social phenomenon would undoubtedly have been judged by some war-
time intelligence officers to have constituted a security risk, I can find no
evidence that any attempt was made at the time to question any Iraq-based
officers’ relationships, or that sexual preference might have had any bear-
ing on the smooth running of intelligence operations in Iraq. I therefore
consider it inappropriate to name any other names in this context. Freya
Stark’s principal biographer Jane Geniesse also merely speaks of ‘Baghdad’s
homosexual circle’ in passing. Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Passionate Nomad:
The Life of Freya Stark (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 340. It should
