A spy round every corner
Sir: I derive some amusement from the depiction, in the latest documents released by the Public Record Office, of my old Express colleague Sefton Delmer as a mas- ter spy. The truth is that the Germans regarded him as a buffoon, whose party trick was to speak in German with a heavy Berlin accent. And 90 per cent of his sto- ries, written in safety back in Britain, about Nazi sexual perversions, finished on the spike.
Unfortunately, the same healthy scepti- cism deserted the Express management when, instead of spiking the piece by Delmer's contemporary, Morley Richards, claiming that the 1944 bomb plot was Nazi propaganda, they printed it on the front page.
The fancy of a spy around every corner was later perpetuated by another Express luminary, Chapman (Harry) Pincher, who checked the flower-bowl at lunch-time in the restaurant Ecu de France, in case it was bugged by the Russians or — even more sinister — by Colonel Wigg.
Ronald Spark
19 The Rotyngs, Rottingdean, East Sussex
Previous page
