Maxwell Knight (right) and friends.
2,074 words
The spymaster’s fascist background is just one of the many obstacles in telling the Maxwell Knight story.
One of the oddest television projects now in development is a forthcoming series about master spy Maxwell Knight, the real-life “M” of MI5. (more…)
William Joyce
3,327 words
William Brooke Joyce, the Berlin propaganda broadcaster known as “Lord Haw-Haw,” and the last man to be executed in England for treason, was an agent for MI5. He went to Berlin in August 1939 at the behest of an old friend and spymaster, and wound up becoming the English voice of Nazi radio. Then, in 1945, he was brought back to London, tried as a traitor, and hanged on January 3, 1946.
This was done to please the Kremlin, and to protect Communists in the British government and intelligence services. (more…)
2,183 words
Francis Beckett
Fascist in the Family: The Tragedy of John Beckett MP
London & New York: Routledge, 2017 (Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right)
Here is a book of deep political scholarship and heartbreaking family history. It misses being great because the author lost the plot during the many years he worked on it, and he wound up hanging his father’s story on a lurid promotional “hook,” which I’ll get into below. (more…)
11,508 words
William Joyce, more infamously known to history as “Lord Haw Haw,” the epitome of a British Traitor, was hanged on the basis of a passport technicality on January 3, 1946. Like the name “Quisling” (see Ralph Hewin’s excellent biography Quisling: Prophet Without Honour) much nonsense persists about Joyce. (more…)
4,038 words
Editor’s Note:
The following is the second chapter, “Economic Development,” of William Joyce’s Twilight Over England.
William Joyce, 1906–1946
4,575 words
German translation here
Editor’s Note:
The following is the first chapter, “Historical Background,” of William Joyce’s Twilight Over England. Joyce was born in New York City. Then he went to Ireland and England, where he became a member of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. (His face was horribly scarred in a street battle with Jewish thugs.) (more…)
