258
be noted that I have only mentioned Stewart Perowne’s evident homo-
sexuality because it caused the failure of his marriage to Freya Stark. Cf.
Philip Knightley, ‘So What’s New about Gay Spies?’ The Independent, 1
June 1997.
- These biographical fragments come from many scattered sources. The
reader must forgive me for not enumerating them.
- A nephew seems sure that it was MI6, and that Dawson-Shepherd served
in Beirut with Kim Philby. See Jack Kirwan, Wheelhouse to Kirwan in Easy
Stages: A Voyage round My Family History (So Far) (Lulu.com, 2010), 134.
- Dr. Alexander Dawson-Shepherd, letter to the author, 8 May 2018.
- Adrian O’Sullivan, Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia
(Iran): The Success of the Allied Secret Services (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015) [ECOP], 233.
- Confusingly, one nonspecialist source has Philip running the Sharq al-
Adna (Near East Broadcasting Service [NEBS]) station in January 1943,
which must be an error. I quote: ‘January 1943: Nancy [Durrell (who
would later marry Teddy Hodgkin)] and Penelope [Nancy’s daughter]
return to Jerusalem where Nancy works briefly in the censorship office
before Olivia Manning helps her find a sub-editor job with the Palestine
Post and introduces her to Aidan Philip, the director of the (British) Near
East Arab Broadcasting Station in Haifa, who offers her a job at the radio
station, and to Edward Hodgkin, who succeeds Philip in that position in
1945 after the office moves to Jerusalem.’ Brewster Chamberlin, A
Chronology of the Life and Times of Lawrence Durrell (Corfu: The Durrell
School of Corfu, 2007), 52. It seems to me more likely that Philip and
Hodgkin were in Jerusalem in early 1943 on leave or on SOE business at
the station (delivering propaganda material perhaps), or possibly just to
escape from John Chapman, who had taken over South Gate at precisely
that time. For more about NEBS, see Douglas A. Boyd, ‘Sharq al-Adna/
The Voice of Britain: The UK’s “Secret” Arabic Radio Station and Suez
War Propaganda Disaster,’ Gazette: The International Journal for
Communication Studies 65, no. 6 (2003): 443–5.
- ‘Dotty’ or not, and under cover or not, Philip himself described his pecu-
liar situation to Freya Stark as follows: ‘I live in a mad little shop in the
bazaar and don’t like to be seen in it except by close friends but enjoy it a
great deal. It’s almost a shop to not sell books in. ... I only hold out to get
them for those isolated in the east ... [in] places like oilfields and tea gar-
dens.’ Philip to Stark, 10 September 1946, Container 20.5 (Aidan Philip),
Series II Correspondence, 1893–1985, HRC.
- Supplement to the London Gazette, 1 January 1972, 8.
- For instance, GCMG: Ken Cornwallis; KBE: Vyvyan Holt; DBE: Freya
Stark; OBE: Hanbury Dawson-Shepherd, Stewart Perowne, Hermione
ADRIAN O’SULLIVAN
