The Mystery of Big Ben

Legend has it that Big Ben – the Clock which was the very heartbeat of the British Commonwealth, despite the Nazi bombs rang forth throughout the Second World War, never missing a beat. This is the popular myth much quoted in textbooks and official histories of the Palace of Westminster. Yet on two separate occasions Big Ben stood silent for periods of exactly 12 hours during World War Two. These occasions are never reported or mentioned in the histories. They form a Mystery with perhaps a sinister implication for Britain’s conduct of the War. The first episode took place on the night of Tuesday June 3rd1941, when at exactly 10.13 pm – Big Ben stopped. It was restarted exactly 12 hours later at 10.13 am on the following day by the authorities and listeners to the BBC Home Service were perplexed not to hear the hourly live chime of Big Ben broadcast across the airwaves. 

The Second mysterious silencing of the Bell took place on the night of Saturday December 10^th 1944 and again the Clock lay silent for 12 hours. The Second event was reported in the Montreal Gazette the following day. In both cases exactly the same official explanation for the mysterious cessation of the clock was offered to the Newspapers – a mechanical defect, in the first occasion a workman had left a hammer in the mechanism whilst doing repairs and this had caused the clock mechanism to jam. Given the National and International importance of this Icon of Freedom – a careless event to have occurred not just once but twice.  Both the timings of these coincidental events are significant.  The First came just  24 days after the secret arrival of Nazi Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess in Britain and 19 days before the Nazi Surprise attack on Soviet Russia. At the time of the Second Silence in December 1944, Secret Negotiations had been carried out between the American OSS and BritishMI6 with Head of the SS Heinrich Himmler in Sweden and Switzerland for almost ayear.  In Ian Fleming’s Screenplay of his 1965 James Bond Film Thunderball  - Big Ben was used a secret communication device with SPECTRE by the British Government. Was Ian Fleming perhaps revealing his secret knowledge of a dark wartime secret – involving clandestine negotiations of the allies with figures in the Nazi Regime and military?  .

There can be little doubt that the internationally reported silencing of Big Ben would serve as brilliant clandestine signal that someone in the highest authority had confirmed agreement to a previous clandestine communication which predicted such an event. In this way , the British government might secretly signal agreement to a deniable pact without fear of exposure.  In 1941, such a signal might have been used to entice the Nazis to attack Russia, in 1944 it might have formed part of a scheme to accelerate the ending of the Third Reich. Or course it could have all been down to take clumsy workman all along.

Ian Fleming and the Murder of Sir Harry Oakes

As has been recounted here before - the mystery of the murder of Sir Harry Oakes on the night of July 7th 1943 is one of the most celebrated unsolved murders of all time. A new suspect has now emerged onto the scene - none other than James Bond Creator and Second World War Naval Intelligence Officer Ian Lancaster Fleming.
We now have evidence that Fleming was in the Bahamas Region at the time of the Oakes Murder and that he may well along with his OSS/SOE Colleague Ivar Bryce have had good motive to take action against Oakes. Fleming arrived in New York from Bermuda with his new Director of Naval Intelligence Edmund Rushbrooke on the 19th  May 1943 on board Pan Am clipper 18611, he then in July 1943 attended an Anglo-American Naval Conference at the Mrytle Bank Hotel in Kingston Jamaica.

It would have been perfectly possible for Fleming and Bryce to meet in secret with Harry Oakes either prior or after the conference or to command a team of operatives to carry out a murder.The motive for such action would have been the purpose of the conference, namely to counter Axis U-Boat activity in the Caribbean, which both the US and British Governments suspected was being aided by Swedish Pro-Nazi Axel Wenner Gren, business associate and personal friend of Oakes, and the Duke of Windsor - a known pro-Nazi who was also a close personal friend of Oakes. Both Bryce and Fleming had the background and credentials for such a visit. Whatever happened at the meeting, the feisty Oakes brought a revolver and was accidentially killed. The resulting cover-up first involved coercing his business partner Harold Christie to take Oakes body along with some muscle to the Westborne residence and place Oakes back in his bed and set it on fire. Perhaps it was hoped that the fire would make it look like an accident and disguise signs of violent death. A fan put out the flames and Christie "finding" the body in the morning ran the police. The Duke of Windsor to avert suspicion from his unsavoury connections with Oakes, enlisted the Miami Police to frame Oakes erstwhile son in Law Maringy.
Why has it taken so long for Fleming to emerge as a suspect? - Until the publication this year of Matthew Parkers' book Goldeneye- where Bond was born, biographers have wrongly placed the year of Fleming's first visit to Jamaica to the autumn of 1944 . How very convenient.

The Disappearance of Victor Grayson - Socialist MP

Victor Grayson was perhaps Britain's most radical and rabble rousing MP. Elected Britain's first and perhaps only Socialist MP in 1907 at an age of 25 he stormed through the Yorkshire Hills around Huddersfield and took his fight to Westminster. He was thrown out of the House of Commons calling the MP's murderers for not debating hunger in the ranks of Britain's starving unemployed and their children. In today's Britain with it's doubling Child poverty and burgeoning food banks it strikes a note. Grayson was a thorn in the side of the Labour Party and lacking the backing of officials lost his seat in 1910. His speeches are still today both prophetic and inspiring.  Grayson set up a rival political party to Labour - the British Socialist Party in 1911, and became a free wheel on the radical left, even backing British involvement in World War 1. He enlisted and was injured on the Western Front and looked set for a come back to parliament after 1918. The sudden death of his wife and baby in February 1918 was followed by a series of strange events in 1920, including an attack on him in a London Street, and his eventual disappearance escorted to oblivion in the company of two men who had collected him to leave his lodgings to embark on a long trip. He was never to return.
What happened to him? - Some reports link him to Ireland and a clandestine visit to Dublin. Others suggest that he left Britain to die in Australia or New Zealand. He was subject to a series of supposed sightings in Kent or on a London Street in the next 20 years. Some of his friends claimed he was living secretly in London and living a quiet life working at a London furnishing shop.

More sinister suggestions have been made - that he was murdered at the hands of notorious honours trafficker and political fixer Maundy Gregory. 

Intelligence writer Donald McCormick (Aka Richard Deacon) was in 1970 the first researcher to link the two men, a fact substantiated by Lord Clark of Windermere in interviews with Grayson's Hotel Manageress Hilda Porter in 1985. McCormick claimed to have had possession of letters from Artist George Flemwell who sighted Grayson disappearing into Gregory's Island Bungalow on September 28th 1920 , but this is strongly challenged as a fabrication and McCormick claimed to have sold the letters in 1974.
Grayson's family became alarmed at his disappearance. His daughter last saw him in 1919 and was told he had left on a long trip to write a book. His sister who travelled down to London from Liverpool in 1920 to nurse his injuries found he had left the Georgian House in Bury Street, London and could not find him. In 1927 his brother returned from the merchant navy tried to find him, and his mother appealed to Scotland Yard and the National Newspapers. No luck, despite a deathbed plea to see him before she died, she passed away in 1929 still separated from her missing son. In 1942, his sister who had emigrated to Toronto Canada, urged Scotland Yard to launch a man-hunt for the missing MP. They discovered that Grayson had been attacked but could find no body or trace of a living man matching his description. In 1952, prompted by an anonymous letter Grayson's sister used her life savings to travel to London to seek help from Scotland Yard and the National Newspapers to no avail. Donald Trelford reported that Grayson's file in Scotland Yard's Missing Persons Department was the size of 2 London Telephone Books. That file which existed in 1942, 1948 & 1955 , along with Special Branch, MI5 and other files have long since been lost or destroyed. Attempts by researchers, MPs, Cabinet Minister and authors to see them from the 1960's onwards have met with no success. Because of Grayson's love of drink, and alleged womanising - many have been too quick to discount his possible murder, yet the combination of an attack on his person and his removal from his Mayfair lodgings by 2 unknown men suggest foul play. Certainly something happened to him which prevented his return to see his 6 year old daughter, his mother and sister after 1920, and if alive after 1927 he would have found word to reach out to his family.

Ian Fleming, Mein Kampf and his 1938 Appeasement Letter to the London Times

One thing you might miss in a biography of James Bond creator, Ian Fleming is his interesting letter to the London Times on September 28th 1938, during the Munich Crisis with Nazi Germany. In the Long letter, Fleming reveals he owns a copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and has obtained a rare Nazi document dated 1920 which predates Mein Kampf. His house in London 22b Ebury Street, bought from British Fascist Oswald Mosley contained a collection of rare manuscripts, including Mein Kampf and the Nazi document, which Fleming claimed showed Hitler was in earnest.Also in display was Mussolini's 1919 Passport he has acquired in 1937 from honours trafficker Maundy Gregory's collection.
To quote Fleming " It would therefore seem that there will be no peace, no return of prosperity, and no happiness in europe until England and France agree to the fulfillment of Herr Hitler's stated programme in exchange for a binding disarmament pact and the guarantee of the traditional protective alliances of the signatory powers."
Fleming argues to keep morality out of the issue, and if a settlement with Hitler could not be made then it would be" time to turn a reluctant ear either to the dangerous counsels of the slaughterhouse brigade (could he mean Winston Churchill?) or the bemused vapourings of those who long for the day that england is another Holland and out of the fight forever (Isolationists?)"

Fleming was not as a true blue Churchillian as he is portrayed and his many fascist (such as Bobby Canning) and Chamberlainite friends (Sir Joseph Ball) put him centrally in the pro-appeasement camp at the time of Munich, fuelled by frequent trips to Germany and Austria during the period.

Fleming's letter can be found in full in the Times Digital Archive:

The Industrial Welfare Society and Germany

King George VI was deeply interested in matters industrial and became in 1919 Royal Patron of the Boys Welfare Association which was renamed the Industrial Welfare Society. A guest at the annual dinner of the IWS at the Hotel Victoria on December 8th 1937 included Nazi Party member and German diplomat Docktor Eric Kordt who the week before had attended the 500 strong 2nd annual dinner of the Nazi movement the Anglo-German Fellowship at Grosvenor House. What was this leading London Nazi doing at the IWS dinner, yet another Nazi link to the Royals which included Lord Mountbatten's father in Law, Lord Mount Temple as chair of the AGF, Lord Halifax who was George VI's choice of Prime Minister in 1940.

Churchill and the Fascist Plot

Tonight's Channel 4 Documentary "Churchill and the Fascist Plot" does much to put into the public mind the importance of the threat Archibald Ramsay's Right Club posted to Winston Churchill and British National Security in May 1940. It does however leave out the important questions surrounding the role of MI5 Director General Vernon Kell in the Wolkoff affair including his friendship with Anna and her parents. More importantly the role played by MI5's grey eminence Major Sir Joseph Ball who as a key advisor to Neville Chamberlain met with the Right Club leader Ramsay in the Carlton Club annex in June 1939 to hear Ramsay evidence of supposed Judeo-Masonic subversion of the intelligence community, Moscow's role in IRA attacks against Chamberlain and Ball's covert requests to Ramsay to gather evidence harmful to Churchill leading to the Tyler Kent affair.
The role of James McGuirk Hughes, Maxwell Knight and Henry Newnham the editor the Right Club, paper the Truth, all associates of Ball deserve scrutiny. Ball is also cryptically referred to as "Big Man behind the Truth" in the infamous message to William Joyce(Knight's one time agent) in Berlin who became the voice of Germany - Lord Haw Haw.
The Right Club is wrongly portrayed as a bonkers group of anti-semites, yet they had members which included MP's, Dukes and most of the Conservative Party's whips office.
The Right Club were meeting with Oswald Mosley's British Fascists and other far right anti-war groups in preparation to stop Churchill and support Chamberlain's secret backchannels to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy - links which included the Duke of Westminster's Peace Group involving Henry Drummond-Wolff and Joseph Ball and Arthur Bryant.
Good So far as it went but much left out.

Questions about Harry Oakes Death

The Murder of Sir Harry Oakes in 1943 was described by Perry Mason Creator - Erle Stanley Gardner  who reported on the murder trial as the Crime of the Century. It remains the most illusive Cold Case to date. Apparently new evidence has emerged to show that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's fingerprints were identified at the crime scene. It is known that the Duke visited the Crime Scene to see oversee the investigation by the discredited Miami Policemen he invited to frame Oakes's playboy son-in-law. I have brought new evidence that Oakes was part of a pro-appeasement network in London and the US and contributed £10,000 to see British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain re-elected in 1938 in a cash for honours arrangement organised by transatlantic Art Dealer Baron Duveen and Sinister Spy Spin Doctor Sir Joseph Ball.
Marshall Houts, the author, FBI agent, forensic professor and co-creator of TV's Quincy ME suggested in his Kings X book that Mafia involvement was at the heart of the case, according to informers.
Remaining crime scene questions remain:

• Where was the Revolver that Oakes kept by his bedside
• Why did Harold Christie and the Duke of Windsor first report the death as Suicide or Shooting
• What did Bahamian Police Chief Lindop-Erskine believe and why was he transferred to Trinidad to prevent his taking command of the case
• Was Oakes subject to torture by burning while still alive 
• The blood trail on Oakes face show he died face down with blood gushing from a head wound proving the heavy body had been moved by persons capable of lifting the corpulent baronet's corpse.
• What happened to Oakes Fortune, the stories of illicit Gold smuggling and the role of Oakes Hotel on San Salvador.
• Was the bizarre nature of the head wound the result of a clumsy attempt to disguise a shooting.
• How was the Oakes Murder connected with subsequent murder of American Lawyer Betty Renner in 1950    , she supposedly contacted one of Oakes's friends who was a key witness in the trial (Harold Christie - perhaps?) and was found murdered 3 miles from Oakes Westbourne home.
• What of the fate of the murdered witnesses who died from poisoned rum?
• Why was Bahamas Governor Sir George Sandford who died in 1950 a supposed victim of the cover-up - did he pry and die another rumoured poison victim?
• What was the role of Bahamian finance minister/businessman Sir Stafford Sands in the affair, who was friend to Oakes and Jury Foreman in the trial
• Harold Christie remained for most Bahamians the No.1 Suspect in the Oakes Murder - was he the man who dreamt of marrying Lady Oakes by murdering her husband and was he involved in the murder of his personal secretary Dorothy Macksey in May 1962 . Why did our current monarch Queen Elizabeth II feel happy about Knighting such a contraversial figure as Harold Christie in 1964?
• Why did Lord Beaverbrook take such an interest in the affair sponsoring two investigating books by Bocca in 1959 and Leasor in 1983.

Joseph Ball, MI5, Oxford and Balliol College

In 1916, MI5's Joseph Ball was based at Barnet House, Broad Street in Oxford. He wrote to Arthur Smith, Master of Balliol concerning arrangements for Albert Mansbridge to attend a conference at Balliol College on 27th October 1916. The Notes seem to indicate that Ball himself would chair the conference and the notes were written on notepaper of Senior Tutor of St John's College Oxford.
What was Ball's First World War activities in Oxford for MI5?
http://archives.balliol.ox.ac.uk/Modern%20Papers/ALSmith/alsmithletterb.asp

Joseph Ball and Guy Burgess

One particular aspect of the sinister work of MI5's Joseph Ball has been hard to research. His dealings and involvement with the Cambridge Spies - especially Guy Burgess. Many Intelligence writers in their researching of Burgess, Maclean, Philby and then Blunt between 1951 and 1995 have said various things about Ball - suggesting that he was Homosexual, that he sponsored Burgess into MI5 and that he used him for various intelligence related activities  (Burgess's link to Daladier, his Radio work, spying on Heinlein) and that Ball was an active member of the Anglo-German Fellowship and part of a Pro-Nazi circle which included Henry Ford, Henri Deterding, and Basil Zaharoff.
Guy Burgess himself in 1956 told Tom Driberg about his activities with Ball and also named Ball in a list of mostly prominent homosexual aquaintances in reports to Moscow in declassified KGB files from the 1930's.
Ball strongly denied the Burgess allegations in 1956 and his lawyers made Driberg redact much of the material from his book. Because many of the Cambridge Spy writers got many of the biographical details about Ball wrong and wrongly believed Burgess that Ball was a member of the AGF when it was a namesake, I have largely discounted Burgess's claims and the rumours of Ball's homosexuality as Moscow propaganda aimed at discrediting a leading right wing spook. However revisiting Conspiracy of Silence by Penrose and Freeman (1987) I realised that MI5 officer TAR Robertson did corroborate in conversations with Freeman in 1985  in part Burgess's involvement in a clandestine intelligence link from Neville Chamberlain to Eduard Daladier in 1938 which use the St Ermin's Hotel and Burgess's claim to have slept with Daladier's Chef du Cabinet. I now feel that most of what Burgess claimed about Ball including his homosexuality (with the exception about the Anglo-German Fellowship, though Ball may have clandestine involvement) now is more likely to be fact than malicious invention. Given that, Homosexuality is the most likely explanation for Ball's rapid rise, his meeting Burgess and sponsorship of Howard and other homosexuals in MI5 and CRD and links to the pederast Maundy Gregory.

HG Wells Inside Track

As reported earlier, when in June 1946 HG Wells read reports about Mussolini's secret funding of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1930's he was so appauled that he wrote a stinging attack questioning whether the British Royal Family had been involved in this funding. His attack a month before his death was the most sensational attack on British monarchy ever made by a senior public figure and was reported around the world. It was quickly belittled as a the ramblings of a great man well past his prime and even saw the once interned traitor Mosley come to the defence of the Monarchy.


Yet what exactly triggered Well's allegations? - The statement in the House of Commons by Labour Home Secretary Chuter Ede outlined a secret bank account used by the BUF to receive funds. Wells may well have received information from his Russian lover Moura Budberg who was suspected by MI5 of being a triple agent  "Russian Mata Hari" and she may have secret information via the Cambridge Spies or her Moscow network. Well's suspicions may have been reinforced by his prior knowledge of the Duke of Windsor's fascist links when he was Prince of Wales and briefly King Edward VIII or the activities of Prince George Duke of Kent and those of Lord Mountbatten and his nefarious friends.
The true key was the activities of Sir Louis Greig (member of the Fascist front January Club) King George VI's key mentor and advisor who had been close to pro-fascist Maundy Gregory and his brother in law AC Scrimgeour who had financed the BUF to the tune of £11,000.
Well's parting shot might have been closer to the mark than many at the time realised.

Appeasement: The Leeds Castle Connection

Many of the visitors to Leeds Castle in Kent might not realise that they are visiting a site as important as Cliveden to the history of British Appeasement.

Lady Olive Baillie was a society hostess to rival pro-Nazi Hostesses Emerald Cunard and Maggie Greville. All three hosted first the sets around Royal Princes, the Prince of Wales, Duke of York and Duke of Kent. Lady Baillie was daughter of Lord Queenborough.

Lady Baillie became renowned as a hostess. The Baillies lived during the week in London and held house parties at Leeds Castle at the weekends. Frequent visitors to the castle were political friends of Sir Adrian, David Margesson and Geoffrey Lloyd who were to become lifelong friends of Lady Baillie.^[11] During the 1930s members of the royalty, including the Prince of Wales with Mrs Simpson, the Duke of York, Princess Marina, Queen Maria of Romania, Alfonso XIII of Spain and the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia were visitors. Other prominent visitors included Sir Alfred Beit, many MPs, including Anthony Eden, and Germany's ambassador to Britain, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Lady Baillie was a lover of the cinema and her guest list during that decade included the film stars Douglas Fairbanks senior and junior, Fredric March, Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn, Lili Damita, Robert Taylor, James Stewart^[3] and Gertrude Lawrence.^[12] Other guests were Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, Barbara Hutton, the author Ian Fleming, and the singer Richard Tauber.^[12]

Sir Adrian Baillie was Conservative MP for Tonbridge and a leading Scottish Freemason.  

Here is pictured with Grand Master the Duke of Kent in the 1930's.Writer Daphne Du Maurier described the set at Leeds Castle in the 1920's and 1930's as the worst sort, and leaked MI5 files Kim Philby sent to Moscow place the set around Lady Baillie as having very strange Occult gambling  involving cabinet ministers there during World War 2. (Crown Jewels 1998) 

What is clear is that Baillie was a prime mover in Fascist Circles, he invited Nazi Alfred Rosenberg to London in May 1933 and he was a member like Sir Louis Greig of the fascist front the January Club (Blackshirt - Dorrill 2006 p.237)

He had connections to the British Film Industry - to London Films and his own company set up in 1938 with Fairbanks -Albion Films Ltd. It is likely that he was well known to Sir Joseph Ball who at this time also was a leading light in the British Film Sector. By the way, fellow scot and Ball's friend at MI6 - it's head C, was Stewart Menzies and he was also a frequent visitor to the Castle. Given Ball's friendship to Lloyd (at CRD and Truth) and Margesson - it seems likely that Ball was also part of this circle.

Baillie was Grand Master of Lodge Polkmmet 927 in Edinburgh in 1930-31 and a previous Grand Master in the same lodge was a J Greig - possibly Louis Greig's elder stockbroking brother.

With the death of the Duke of Kent who had succeeded George VI as Supreme Grand Master , there is an obvious masonic link here with all the major players in the Rudolf Hess Affair in 1941.

It is another example of the many right wing appeasement and homosexual circles in which all the Royal Princes, including George VI circulated in.

The Scandal of the Queen Mother's Secretary

Miss Nourah Chard secretary to Mrs Lucy Baldwin, wife of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was a friend of notorious honours trafficker Maundy Gregory, so he claimed to Conservative Party Chairman in 1928. She worked as a secretary also for the Queen Mother when she was the fiance to the Duke of York in 1923 .She married in secret Sir Ronald Waterhouse in August 1928, an Intelligence Officer who became Equerry to the Duke of York (later George VI) in 1921 and was also on very friendly terms with Gregory. She later as Lady Nourah Waterhouse broke the behind the scenes story of the role of Waterhouse and JCC Davidson in securing Stanley Baldwin the premiership in 1923.Gregory boasted that he had obtained honours for his clients from a Royal Duke in financial difficulty and in 1925  he recieved a letter from the Duke of York's Comptroller in receipt of a personal birthday gift. No wonder Gregory boasted he had much "pull at the palace"

Waterhouse had Gregory claimed set up in competition to him in the honours trafficking racket, whilst Davidson organised a secret arrangement with Gregory channelling funds to the Conservative Party which saw the alarm over Gregory's links with Fascist Italy and Right Wing Circles in the Ukraine and Germany along with his compromising of the Yorks triggering the 1933 arrest, trial and his exile in France  paid by political funds.

Trouble in Paradise

Sir Harry Oakes died in 1943, murdered and set alight in his Bahamas Mansion. The mystery of his murder remains unsolved after the sensational aquittal of the prime suspect Count Maringy, the victim of a plot organised by the Bahamian Governor and exiled King - the Duke of Windsor. This story has everything, the involvement of  a famous private eye, corrupt Miami Policemen, and a string of unexplained suicides and murders of people connected or interested in the case, included allegedly a Bahamas Governor (Sir George Sandford)  in 1950 and a Bahamas Civil Servant (US Lawyer Betty Renner in 1949 - whose body was stuffed into a well). The Oakes were plagued by death and Oakes's Widow was victim of a blackmail attempt.

My own researches have revealed that Harry Oakes had strong political connections in England and that in exchange for his Baronetcy he had contributed to a secret political slush fund controlled by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's fixer Sir Joseph Ball in 1938-9. The Introduction had come from  British New York Art Dealer Baron Joseph Duveen who had visited Adolf Hitler in Bertchesgaten.

David Hugh Montgomerie Boyle

David Hugh Montgomerie Boyle
born 1883
Cousin of Earl of Glasgow (who like Ormond Winter was a key figure in the British Fascists)
His father Henry David Boyle (1856-1917) was director of Dawnay Day, Giant Mines of Rhodesia, Russian Mining Corporation, Lena Goldmines.

Educated Wellington School and New College Oxford

1904 Customs Officer at Peking
1906 Tea Planter Ceylon
1907 Bombay Burma Timber Corp
1910 Officiated at Coronation of George V?
1912 ADC Gold Coast Priv Sec to Civil Comissioner Ashanti
1913-1918 Various roles in Gold Coast Colony according to X document "resigned owing to differences of opinion with his superiors against whom he was reported to have intrigued"
1914-18 according to X document - "No record of any war service but sent to USA by C (Mansfield Cumming head of MI6) under Colonel T(hwaites). There he started intrigues against T and during T's absence on leave, closed down the organisation. He was recalled and his services ceased. Prior to this he had been severely censured by Sir R(obert) N(athan) whom he accused of suppressing his telegrams. Next heard of having joined the Black and Tans and subsequently as having been recruited for the intelligence branch at police headquarters, Dublin Castle, in a junior capacity. Here again he started intrigues against his superiors and is reported to have gone to the length of lodging complaints with the Prime Minister respecting them. His services were ceased very shortly afterwards."

According to Cave Brown (The Secret Servant 1987) he escaped Dublin by a whisker.
1919 Son Alistair born New York City (he supposedly working in  Ministry of Pensions)
1920 As MI6 officer he was according to Cave Brown  which enbroils him in the failed attempt on De Valera in USA in1920 and saw him deported at the centre of a bruising Anglo-American Intelligence Row.
1921 His son Ranald born in Fairlie in Ayrshire, He is now in the Far East as a correspondant for the Morning Post with his wife remembering of course his father's role and his later role as director of Cunard and Anchor Line. The "X" document picks up the story : "Still later he was sent on a mission to the Far East by "C" (again Mansfield Cumming) and his wife accompanied him as secretary. His efforts were regarded by the authorities with such grave displeasure that he was recalled and his services ceased again. He subsequently wrote a series of elementary articles on the Far East for the Morning Post"
1923
1924 Rear Admiral Hugh Quex Sinclair succeeds Cumming as head of MI6. X Document - "He next succeeded in obtaining employment on the Prince of Wales Staff on the latter's visit to America (13/9/24) as " a specialist on American Society". He did not, however last the tour out but unexpededly re-appeared in England while the prince was still in America. It is reported that he had been very tactless in his advice to the Prince."
1925
1926 - Letter to Times from Travellers Club "Profits of War"- praising Baruch Plan
1927 - 2/2 Letter to Times on Far East "Japan is our friend", on TOCH appeals Committee
1928
1929
1930 - Booked on Graf Zepplin to Fredrichshaven from Cardington travelling with Japanophile Master of Semphill. Attending Wedding with Sir Ronald Graham  and Mrs Roberts (possibly same as lady in Hamilton -Haushofer letters 1939-1941)
1931
1932 - Times Letter Safety at Sea, Times Letter on US/India
1933 Times letter on Armanents
1934 Pro-Japan letter on Manchurian Railway to TImes "eastern artery"
1935 - Director Anchor Line with Runcimans - resident Fairlieburne, Fairlie Ayrshire
1936
1937 Glebe House, Lewes - officiates at Cornonation of GVI - Kings Messenger
1938 Personal Assistant to Sinclair, running section N at MI6
1939 - Sent by C(SInclair) to visit Berlin on eve of war (with involvement of GVI, Halifax and Cadogan) 10/10 resigns directorship of Dawnay Day because of war work. Personal assistant to New MI6 chief Stewart Menzies who he supports in role.
1940
1941 -Possible involvement in Hess Affair
1948 CMG from GVI for MI6 work
1959 Book "With ardours manifold"
1960 attended funeral of cousin Sd Ldr PN Boyle
1970 died aged 87

The Riddle of "X" Solved

The Riddle of X - solved

Buried in the Private Papers of Viscount Davidson at the House of Lords was a curious 2 page typed manuscript marked the Career of “X”. It is a very curious document indeed and recounts a confidential investigation into the exploits of an unknown but influential anti-communist insider at the heart of 1920’s Government circles. After many years of search to reveal the Identity of X – I believe that X is non-other than the shadowy friend of MI6 Chief Steward Menzies – David Boyle. This close friend of Sir Stewart Menzies and George VI was closely involved in appeasement, contacts with Nazi Germany and at the centre of an US-British spy row in 1920 which blighted Anglo-American relations until 1940. The US and Britain continued to draw up War Scenarios against each other until 1933, and the American Suspicion that Britain helped Japan build up a Naval Aviation Threat which fulminated in Pearl Harbour in 1941 was based on Lord Sempill's activities in Japan, he may have been protected by anti-american and anti-bolshevists in MI6 and the British establishment. 

The X document was clearly hostile to Boyle and seems to have originated from sources close to MI5 circa 1922-23, possibly Joseph Ball who was in communication with Davidson at the time.

Comparison of X & David Boyle

“X” profile                                                                          Boyle (The Secret Servant Cave Brown)

·                       Reported to have joined                                   A relative of the Earl of Glasgow,one of (Stewart)

West African Civil Service                             Menzies closest friends and a member of the

But resigned after intriguing                       British secret service in New York. Accused of

Against his superiors.                                     Plotting to kidnap Eamon De Valera, President of

NO WAR SERVICE IN WWI                            Sinn Fein, who was living in the city, the state dept

But sent to USA by Mansfield                     compelled the Foreign Office to withdraw Boyle’s

Cumming after war under                            mission. The Boyle mission was liquidated, and

Colonel Thwaites where                                   Boyle was sent to the staff of the Prince of Wales

He intrigued against Thwaites                    who was visiting Canada. Boyle was a shadowy

In his absence and closed                             figure whose CV read like that of an aristocratic

Down the organisation.                                 Odd job man but a proficient one. Since 1920

He was censured by Sir Robert                  when we last saw Boyle attempting to kidnap

Nathan whom he accused of                      De Valera, Boyle was aide de camp to the POW

Suppressing telegrams. He was                                 in Canada. He escaped the November Murders

Sacked from MI6. Then joined                   in Dublin by a whisker and at one time of another

The Black and Tans and worked                 was a political and social agent for Cunard, a

At Dublin castle for British Intelligence   correspondant for the Morning Post in Shanghai,

Where he again intrigued.                           And Danzig, director of the Anchor Shipping line

Sent by Mansfield Cumming to Far East officer of the Imperial Chinese Customs Service,

Accompaigned by his wife , recalled        tea planter in Ceylon, clerk to shipping agents at

And wrote articles for Morning Post on Ceylon,employee of the Bombay Timber Corp.

The Far East.                                                      And then with the Burmah Oil Company. He became

Joined Prince of Wales Tour of                   too a political officer to the Anglo-Persian Oil Coy.

USA (1919) as an expert on American     He was also district commissioner for the Gold Coast

Society – gave tactless advice to prince  and he also earned his living by commissions  

And returned home early.                           Obtained through the renting of grass shooting in

Closely associated with wealthy                     Scotland to Americans like Bernard Baruch. Also  

Americans In Britain and manages            a Kings Messenger one of the fraternity that carried

their shooting for them.He has                  the Royal and Secret Mail between capitals.

organised an intelligence service              Sent to Berlin in 1939 under Royal instruction to

and Recently approached an                      try to avert war as MI6 Officer. Operated Section N

ex-MI5 officer to Join him and                   which secretly opened diplomatic mail. In Burma

has established a secure safe                     was offered post of gold staff officer to Earl Marshall

Office in Grays Inn dedicated                     and officiated at Coronations of George V,VI and ER.

to anti-bolshevism.No Intelligence

experience worthy of name,

Extremely conceited, lacking in

tact, and has Recently obtained

money from American Millionaires

to form a society for insuring them

Against the risks of Bolshevik activities!

Churchill's Secret Enemy - what new evidence did we bring to light?

Sir Joseph Ball, was one of Neville Chamberlain's chief lieutenants and organiser of the dirty tricks (phone taps, smears,burgulary,constituency de-selection ) campaign against Sir Winston Churchill and many of the Anti-Nazis. Ball even paid for Billboard ads in the Strand "What Price Churchill?" - (the obvious answer - War) to run along side smears against Churchill in the Press (Truth and other papers)

My research points to Sir Joseph as being the originator of Chamberlain's Plan Z - flight to meet Adolf Hitler at Bertchesgaden ( I have previous correspondance between him and Neville Chamberlain in 1935 discussing Plan X ) and proof that Neville Chamberlain was in reciept of a secret election fund to fight a planned general election on November 14th 1939 with monies from pro-appeaser and Bahamas Tax Exile Sir Harry Oakes (letters from Oakes to Ball with a donation of £10,000 to the fund in gratitude for his knighthood and Pro-Nazi British Union of Fascist funder Henry Drummond-Wolff, as well as Anti-semite and Link member the Duke of Westminster (letter from D-H linking the Duke of Westminster to the Research and Publicity Ltd fund and D-H's trips to Germany as well as the September 1939 Westminster Peace Group)

In addition Sir Joseph Ball met with Right Club member Archibald Ramsay MP in June 1939 to hear evidence of a supposed Judeo-Masonic conspiracy involving Churchill to drag Britain into war, and implicitely asked Ramsay to gather evidence of Churchill's supposed treasonous secret communications with President Roosevelt. Those involved in gathering this evidence we then arrested as part of the Nazi Spy ring including Anna Wolkoff, US Embassy Clerk Tyler Kent and Ramsay himself.

My book which cites the evidence held in the Ball Papers at the Bodelian Library in Oxford and the Drummond-Woolf Papers at Leeds University as well as declassified MI5 files at Kew.

When Neville Chamberlain was ousted from power in may 1940 and began to work under Churchill he ensured that Ball was appointed as Deputy of the Security Executive and was put above MI5 and MI6. Ball took his master's fall badly and offered resign to fight against Churchill but by this time Chamberlain was dying with cancer.

Ball continued his friendships with those promoting a negotiated peace with Nazi Germany such as D-H, Westminster, Collin Brooks, Henry Newnham and met with the Duke of Hamilton in May 1941 in the aftermath of the Hess Peace Mission.

He continued to control and secretly run the Magazine Truth until 1941 when it's Pro-German, Pro-fascist and anti-semitic and anti-american views were exposed in parliament by Colonel Josiah Wedgewood.

Ball was finally sacked from the Security Executive in 1942 and went on to found South African and Rhodesian gold mining group LONRHO eventually bringing in German born and Hitler youth Tiny Rowlands to run it.

Many other interesting links to the Cambridge Spies , Ian Fleming and unsolved mysterious murders and accident deaths of leading appeasers and pro-fascists - Oakes, Mazzina, Errol, Laurence of Arabia and the mysterious silence of Big Ben for 12 hours in June 1941 and of course Royal involvement with Maundy Gregory, Appeasement and Fascism - more to be revealed in "His Majesty's Secret"

Chariots of Fascist Fire - Lord Burghley and the Dark Side of Olympian Fitness Eugenics

Lord Burghley, Conservative MP, Olympic Hurdler and organiser of the 1948 London Games, who was explified (though not credited in the film Chariots of Fire) is an interesting friend of King Edward VIII (aka David Prince of Wales, aka the Duke of Windsor) Albert Duke of York (aka King George VI) and his brother in law the Duke of Gloucester.
Burghley was at the heart of the National Fitness Council set up by Joseph Ball and Neville Chamberlain and enthuastically supported by Edward the Eighth who became Duke of Windsor. In January 1939, Burghley was part of a group of prominent British notables who broadcast an appeal for Peace to Nazi Germany which included Poet Laurete John Masefield, who had written the Jubilee Poem, a Poem for the Coronation of George VI and a Poem honouring Neville Chamberlain's sellout at Munich. The group included Sir Kenneth Clarke, and Royal Doctors - Lords Dawson and Horder whose views on Eugenics, Population and Fitness are below. Signaturies included Lord Stamp and Lord Eustace Percy, and Montagu Norman, as well as the Marquess of Willingdon, Historians HAL Fisher and Trevelyan, the Earl of Derby, Michael Sadler, Composer Vaughan Williams, Sir William Bragg  and Edwin Lutyens.

Burghley was married to Lady Mary Montagu Douglas Scott sister to the Duke of Buccleuch , Pro-Nazi Master of the Household for George VI. Her uncle Francis Scott was a neighbour to the fascist Earl of Errol in Kenya and he was related by marriage to the the Dukes of Hamilton. Through the IOC he had frequent contact with the Nazis before and after the 1936 Olympic Games and in 1943 he resigned as Tory MP to become Governor of Bermuda having met with the Duke of Windsor in the Bahamas, there was also talk of him succeeding Windsor as Governor there too.

Burghley was linked to JG Paterson, Aberdare, Stack, Dawson and Wakefield

 

 Burghley was friends with the Duke of Gloucester, George VI and Edward VIII

Dawson and Horder supported Eugenics views