This Week in Britishness

As an unrepentant tea drinker I of course lean toward the Anglophilic, but even I have to concede that these two pieces take Britishness to extremes.

The first was an excerpt of a memoir called Coming Up Trumps that I have to admit sounds wonderful, written by the 90-year-old Baronness Trumpington, nee Jean Campbell-Harris, who seems to have been brought up in luxury and been willing to do pretty much anything to anyone at any time. The photo here is the time "when my good friend Tom King – Lord King of Bridgwater – commented that those people who had served in the Second World War were starting to look ‘pretty old’, it was a natural reaction to stick two fingers up at him." As one does when in the House of Lords.

In the snippet in the Daily Mail, the Baronness writes (among other things) of her time at Bletchley Park.

Although essential, the work formed a dull and exhausting routine. Whenever we could, we rushed up to London and danced all night, then ate enormous breakfasts at a Lyons Corner House, with fake scrambled eggs, fake everything. We always went to the 400, a nightclub on Leicester Square that doesn’t exist any more. We had such happy parties there. I was horrified once because I was at one table with a boyfriend and I looked round and saw my brother at another table with a girlfriend. That was bad enough. But then I looked round again and there, at a third table, was my father. With a girlfriend.

I will have to get my hand on this memoir when it comes out.

And the second moment of Extreme Britishness...well, this is where I have to admit that I regularly and very happily listen to The Deadline, the weekly obits podcast produced by the Daily Telegraph. And there is this very odd section in the middle about letters written to the Telegraph that almost makes me wonder if it's a parody of Britishness.

Take this week, for instance, in which there is a segment about letters on "the proper way to fold fitted sheets" that somehow leads us to King Alfred bowling the cakes, George II's son Fred "who was killed by a cricket ball," and Rule Britannia...I'm still not sure how that worked. You'll just have to listen to it yourself. And say no to the tyranny of hospital corners.

Now, mustache news...

Obit round-up

As threatened promised, here's a quick round-up of the best obituaries I saw this week.

In sports, mad props to Scott E. Entsminger of Columbus, OH, who "respectfully requests six Cleveland Browns pall bearers so the Browns can let him down one last time." And here's to the Browns who presented the family with a jersey with the number of his favorite player (Hall of Famer Lou Groza) but with his name on the back at the memorial service.

In spy news, not only did I enjoy the obituary this week for Austin Goodrich, a cold war spy who worked as a journalist, but I received a tweet from Kristina Goodrich who pointed me to two videos of Mr. Goodrich, entitled Born to Spy.






In feats of World War II derring do, I'm not sure much can beat the obituary of Nadezhda Popova,"a member of an elite corps of Soviet women — known as the “Night Witches” — who fought as bomber pilots in the air war against Germany, and the only one to win three Orders of the Patriotic War for bravery." Intrigued? You should be.

There was no radio; navigation was done with a stopwatch and a map. The planes carried no guns, no parachutes and had only enough weight allowance to take two bombs, forcing the pilots to make multiple sorties (Nadezhda Popova once flew 18 in a single night), returning to base each time to collect more bombs, which were released with a wire cable jury-rigged to the wings.

They would fly in under the radar, cut the engines, two would serve as decoys drawing enemy fire while the third would drop the payload of bombs (which, as you see above was connected by wire); then they would go around again, the second would drop the bombs while the other two drew enemy fire, and then go a third time. Amazing stuff. And because there were no engines and they whooshed along, the Germans called them Nachthexen, the Night Witches. Had you heard about them? I sure hadn't. (She's the one standing in the picture below.)

In canine news, I just read the obituary for Jim Buck who created the job of the professional dog walker.

Establishing Jim Buck's School for Dogs, he trained dozens of dog walkers, using as a test case an otterhound named Oliver the Awful.

During the 40 years Mr. Buck ran his school, he was an eminently recognizable figure: an elegantly turned out, borzoi-thin man of 145 pounds, he commanded the leashes of a half-dozen or more dogs at a time — a good 500 pounds of dog in all — which fanned out before him like the spokes of a wheel. 

He walked in sun; he walked in rain. In wintertime, his charges might be clad in small sweaters bearing the logos of the European resorts where their masters skied. 

Jim Buck’s School for Dogs was equal parts exclusive preparatory academy, exercise class and reform school. In a 1964 profile of Mr. Buck in The New York Times, Gay Talese described him, plying his trade, as looking “like Charlton Heston in the chariot-racing scene in ‘Ben-Hur.’ ” 

But with hindsight, it is more apt to liken Mr. Buck to Lee Marvin in the 1967 film “The Dirty Dozen.”

Oh, it's a wonderful obit. Do check it out.

Various & Sundry: from Hazardous Waste to Couture

So this morning I done did that fabulous thing that I do from time to time: I took all the old batteries and light bulbs and medicine and paint to the Household Hazardous Waste Disposal Center. I drove up and a man in a hazmat suit made me sign a form and then took the stuff away.

I write this in case you were not aware of the Household Hazardous Waste program in your community. Here's the link for the programs in the greater SF Bay Area, if you live in these parts. But do Google for what to do in your area. It feels good to be rid of that stuff.

Of course today I've also been following the news out of San Francisco after the Boeing 777 crashed at SFO. Listening to this recording of the Air Traffic Controllers before and after the crash is really impressive. They don't sound panicked, but boy does the pace of the directions pick up. And the pitch of the voice is a step higher. Come to think of it, maybe they do sound panicked. But they handle it magnificently. My prayers continue for all those affected.

For any native New Yorkers confused about what this means, this is like a plane crash in Queens, as is demonstrated by the handy map below:

The San Francisco Bay for New Yorkers infographic

This raised a question:

But where's Staten Island? RT “@neatorama: The San Francisco Bay for New Yorkers pic.twitter.com/7RgkXmfuDX”
— San Francisco (@sanfranmag) July 5, 2013

And an answer:

@sanfranmag @neatorama Staten Island is Alameda.
— Wanda (@itsWanda) July 5, 2013

So now you know.

There's a new stage production of Much Ado About Nothing I would love to see, with James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave as Benedick and Beatrice. Wouldn't that be something? It's at the Old Vic this September-November, so I'd say my chances are slim to nil, but it's wonderful to contemplate.

I loved this story about June Coleridge, a Bletchley Park codebreaker who just celebrated her 90th birthday.

[She] joined up aged 18 in 1940/1. She lived with an uncle who was building an aerodrome and learnt to fly during that time.

She said, however, that the work itself on the code breaking could be boring and her social life was limited.

She was also sent to Columbo in Sri Lanka as part of her intelligence work.

David Coleridge, one of June's three children, said: "I'm very proud of what she did there at Bletchley. Nobody knew until the later 1970s that anything had happened there, of course."

Yes, of course. Well, I'm glad they know now.

I'm still thinking about this comic Fat is Not a Feeling. Here's one panel of the larger piece:

I think there's more to be uncovered, here, but certainly this has got me cogitating.

Continuing in the "Life is complicated" department, this obit for Rena Price was actually a very difficult read. "Catalyst for the Watts Riot" is the subhead, which is...I don't know what it is, actually. Shorthand, I guess. Reading it, it's like one of those stories where you see the jar of explosive liquid about to tip over and you want to shout "Nooooo!" as the camera goes into slow motion and it's just too late. Is it the fault of the person who knocks over the jar? Or did it build up to that moment? Or was it inevitable? But that's how I read it. It's a history lesson I don't think we've learned. At all.

But let's end with something lovely, shall we? Like this Georges Hobeika Fall 2013 Couture Collection. Who is Georges Hobeika? I have no idea. But the dresses are sure pretty.

Enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend.

Various & Sundry: Lent, Valentines, and Porky Goodness

As you might guess, Lent Madness has come to the fore in the past couple of days. Madness is right! If you haven't checked it out yet, do! And vote -- for whomever you choose. And here's an old post I wrote on 4 things I learned about elections from Lent Madness.

It's been in the 70's around here the past couple of days, but I hear in some parts of the country it's this season called winter. Here's a video my sister made of digging out her car in Portland, Maine.


Now, see, that doesn't look that hard!

It was, of course, also Valentine's Day. And though I did like these Puritan Valentines, as a former Presbyterian, it was the #thingsCalvinistssayonValentinesDay tweets that really set my heart a-flutter.

#ThingsCalvinistsSayonValentinesDay - May I call you Grace, because you are irresistible.
— Relevant Church Guy (@UberRelevant) February 12, 2013

Trust me on this one.

Then again, nothing says Valentine's Day like porky goodness. Wouldn't you like to get something like this instead of a dozen roses?

Gourmet Bacon Assortment This trio of gourmet-quality bacon will light up the eyes and tastebuds of bacon fanatics you know and love. Features the following Nueske's smoked bacon varieties in convenient vacuum-sealed packages: (1) Our famous Applewood-smoked Bacon, 16 oz., (2) Applewood-smoked Peppered Bacon, hand coated with fresh-cracked Tellicherry peppercorns, 16 oz., and (3) New Wild Cherrywood-smoked Bacon, made from an all-natural recipe with no artificial ingredients, 12 oz. A great way to sample the best and choose your favorite!

Mmmm...bacon... Yes, I am now following a purveyor of smoked meats on Twitter.

I haven't been filling you in on the obituaries recently, but there were two excellent ones this week of extraordinary women.

The first, Sarah Baring, was a London socialite who spent much of the war translating German documents at Bletchley Park. She knew German because she'd been at finishing school in Munich where she and a friend "would sit at a neighbouring table and pull faces at [Hitler and his entourage]. They knew us by sight and knew we were English, so they just pretended we weren’t there. We weren’t arrested, because at that stage the Germans were still being frightfully nice to us."

At Bletchley, "Sarah Norton worked on the Naval Section index, helping to provide details of the U-boats to Hut 8, run at that time by Alan Turing, of whom she once said: '[He] was immensely shy, especially of girls... I once offered him a cup of tea, [and] he shrank back as if I’d got measles or something. He was wonderful. We were all very proud of him.'”

The work was gruelling, and Sarah Norton and her colleagues took their pleasures where they could: “One afternoon, we decided to give Jean Campbell-Harris, who later became Baroness Trumpington, a ride in a large laundry basket on wheels that was normally used to move secret files. We launched it down the long corridor where it gathered momentum by the second. To our horror, Jean suddenly disappeared, basket and all, through some double swing doors, crashing to a halt in the men’s lavatories. A serious reprimand was administered and our watches were changed so we were distributed among a more sober group.”

There's more, but you'll have to read it yourself.

Also this week, I learned of the death of Keiko Fukada, whom I had read about a year and a half ago when, at age 98, she became the first woman ever to receive a 10th degree black belt in Judo. "Standing 4ft 10in tall and weighing less than 100lb, Keiko Fukuda took up judo in her native Japan when she was in her early twenties having been schooled in the traditional arts of calligraphy, flower arrangement and the intricacies of the tea ceremony." She has been teaching judo, mostly to women, here in the San Francisco Bay Area since before I was born.

A documentary about her is called Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful. Sounds like a good way to be.

International James Bond Day

An important announcement! Today is International James Bond Day, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Bond film franchise.

Quick: which is your favorite Bond film? I do love From Russia With Love. Though I have a soft spot in my heart for On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Yes, George Lazenby and all. And of course Casino Royale was an excellent reboot. Couldn't stand any of the Timothy Dalton films, though.

And are we looking forward to the new Bond film? Why, yes. Yes, we are.

Various & Sundry, now with 82% more snark!

Just a few tidbits for you this week, which is probably just as well after the deluge of links a week ago.

First of all, $26.99 seems a mite steep for a collection of theologian trading cards. I don't believe they even come with gum. Still, for geekery alone, they are compelling. Behold the description:

Patterned after the all-American baseball card, Theologian Trading Cards provide essential information about the major teachers, leaders, and trouble-makers throughout the history of the church, including the time they lived, their contribution to the church, major significance, and the location where they lived.

Start saving your pennies; they don't come out until November.

On the Art of Non-Conformity blog, Chris Guillebeau gives excellent advice on How to Be Unhappy. Meanwhile The Lark described what happens when a man starts a church for jerks.

To round out this segment of our broadcast, Father Tim asks the perennial question, Is Snark Unchristian? Given that he and few other ne'er-do-wells on Twitter have now established #Snarktoberfest, I believe it is safe to say the answer...depends on what you think of Tim as a human being.

Finally, the obituary for Nicole, Duchess of Bedford reads like a romance adventure novel. Until you get to the end. But let's focus on the happy times, shall we?

Nicole, Duchess of Bedford, who has died in Monte Carlo aged 92, was the third wife of Ian, 13th Duke of Bedford. From 1959, when the press first seized on the story of their romance, until their sudden departure to France in 1974, the Bedfords were seldom out of the news, flamboyantly leading the stately home business as they promoted Woburn Abbey all over the world.

And don't forget her part in the French Resistance: "she conveyed messages and sometimes machine-gun parts past the German occupiers, occasionally using her children’s pram."

A technique to remember.

Various & Sundry, May 18

Would it surprise you to find out your mother was a spy? I loved this article about the woman who left the CIA to become a children's book author.  Must have come as a shock to her daughter, though.

“When Hana turned 8, I took her to the International Spy Museum for a fun program they hold, called Operation Secret Slumber. I gave the keynote talk, telling the assembled kids about the real work of spies. Hana was in the back of the room, but I saw her hand shoot up into the air. Wonderment spread across her face, she blurted out ‘So you’re here because you’re the spy?’"

Surprise!

James Lipton offers advice to Mitt Romney on How to Act Human. It's quite specific: how to laugh, how to hold your arms, problems of casting. I thought it was a fascinating insight into how actors observe someone playing the role of a public figure.

If you want some inspiration, read this story about the Columbia University janitor who just graduated with a degree in Classics.  With Honors.  After 12 years. That's after the six years he spent learning English. Truly impressive.

As a classics major, I wonder if he would approve of Dante's Inferno in Lego form.  Or would he think it was a heresy.

Internet Monk offers a lost parable of Jesus: the Sugar of the Earth.

And Jesus spoke to them and said, “You are the powdered sugar of the earth. As sugar is sprinkled on cakes and cookies to make them attractive and exceedingly sweet, so you shall make my church the most delightful confection the world has known. For the children of this world have an insatiable sweet tooth, and you shall satisfy those who hunger and thirst for empty calories."

Yes, it's slightly bitter.  But oh so good.

Also deliciously bitter, this letter W.H. Auden sent to his priest at St. Mark's in the Bowery.  Liturgy geeks, enjoy. Everyone else, you may go about your day in a practical manner.

Review: The Expats

Sometimes you just want a good thriller to read over a weekend and The Expats certainly fit the bill.  It took a good 200 pages to get all the pieces laid out on the board so you could see what was going on, and even then there were a few more twists to keep me guessing.

It's well written with lots of great descriptions of the Luxembourg expat community--especially the wives who uproot themselves and their lives to follow a husband's career.  They are, the author says, the double exes: expat exlawyers, exdoctors, exbusinesswomen.  And in the case of our hero, Kate Moore, ex-CIA.  You know that means trouble.

Likeable characters, interesting set-up, and a decent pay-off.  I'm afraid I'm damning with faint praise, here, but writing a good thriller is no easy feat. Very enjoyable.

Review: Operation Mincemeat

I meant to read Operation Mincemeat when it first came out, but was only reminded to do so when I saw the obit for Jean Gerard Leigh.  Who was Jean Gerard Leigh, you ask?  She was a dead man's fiance.  Well, faux fiance.  All part of a plan of MI5 to trick the Germans into believing the Allies would invade Greece instead of Sicily.  How, you ask?  By placing a corpse with suggestive papers in the water off the coast of Spain and doing their darndest to convince them the were the genuine article.

This book is hilarious.  Of all the cockamamie schemes ever cooked up in wartime, this one certainly has to be in the top 5.  Not that I can name any of the other four, because they're probably all still classified.  But what with this crazy plan and this colorful cast of characters, I read this laughing at practically every page.

I mean, listen: You've got your hero, Ewan Montagu, who masterminded the plan and his Russian spy/table tennis enthusiast brother, Ivor.  You've got the coroner, Bentley Purchase, who procures a suitable corpse.  You've got a dashing submarine captain, Bill Jewell.  You've got Miss Leigh, aka "Pam."  You've got the near-sighted racecar driver who has to deliver the body to Scotland.  You've got your Spanish embassy absolutely riddled with double-crossers.  You've got your 1/8 Jewish head of the Abwehr in Spain who had better deliver the goods or be shipped off to a concentration camp.

And even though you know from the first that this completely absurd plan actually does work, it's still mind-boggling--MIND BOGGLING--that they were actually able to pull this thing off.

Ben MacIntyre sounds like he had a great time researching and writing this up.  Perhaps he tells you more about some of these people than you really need to know, but they're so interesting I can't blame him.  And the tale!  Well, it deserved to be told.  Read it and enjoy.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I haven't seen The Artist yet.  I also haven't seen The Descendents, or Hugo, or The Tree of Life, or War Horse, or The Help, or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  So basically, I'm a loser when it comes to watching the nominees for best picture, though if you're paying attention you'll note that I saw Midnight in Paris and Moneyball (go A's!).

I did, however, see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and was blown away. I thought Gary Oldman's performance was incredible.  I kept thinking, "How is it he's able to convey what's going on inside when the camera is on the back of his head?"

It may have helped that not terribly long ago I heard the audiobook of TTSS (all umpteen hours of it) so I had an inkling going in what was happening--though I did not remember who the mole was.  It may have also helped that I'd never seen the TV version with Alec Guiness.

I thought they did a fabulous job adapting the book.  They shuffled things around in such a way that helped compress the plot without losing too much (though a couple characters, notably Ciaran Hinds' Roy Bland, got short shrift), and that still allowed the movie to seem leisurely, without too much information compressed in too short a time.  It also added one element to the personal life of one of the characters that I thought was revelatory both about that character and about that period in history. 

And can I just say: art direction!  Oh my goodness!  That whole 1970's Cold War Bureaucratic Bleak was amazing.  I don't know why that didn't get more love; I thought it was incredible.

A warning: there are some strong scenes of torture and violence.  It was not a bloodless and cerebral film by any means.

And now I'd better go and catch up on all the movies I've missed.

All-star obituaries

I meant to write this yesterday but got caught up in the drama of building a mini-greenhouse that I got for Christmas.  There has been much cursing, my friends, and I am sad to report that after two days I still have more to go (hampered by a key piece being somewhat chewed, Harper). I shall report when it is complete.

At any rate, some obits from this week that rate your attention:

Let's start with espionage, shall we?  Loved the obituary for Russian agent Gevork Vartanyan who helped foil a plot to assassinate President Roosevelt during WWII. The story is a bit long to include here, but if you want to know more about the skulduggery behind the Tehran Conference of 1943, I suggest you give this obit a read.

Can you imagine doing work that would save at least 800,000 lives--and counting?  Mary Ellen Avery discovered that premature babies' lungs lack a foamy coating that enables people to breathe.  From that one insight, the survival rate of premies changed. "When Dr. Avery started her work, as many as 15,000 babies a year died from [respiratory distress] syndrome. By 2002, fewer than 1,000 did." Amazing! (Along with being "the first woman to be appointed physician in chief at Children’s Hospital; the first woman to head a clinical department at Harvard Medical School; the first woman to be chosen president of the Society for Pediatric Research; and the first pediatrician to lead the American Association for the Advancement of Science.")

Major Kipper-Ridge saved about 200 lives, which may seem minimal by comparison, but then he was not quite 15.  And a dog.  Which certainly rates an obit in the Telegraph. He held the record for number of mines detected in Somalia, but he also worked in Lebanon and Kenya.  Pretty impressive for a black lab from Wigan.

Finally, I loved the obituary for Lady Rosalind Runcie, widow of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and a wonderful character in her own right, it sounds like.

Her sense of humour was always irreverent. In the 1970s, when Runcie was Bishop of St Albans and the homosexual Labour MP Tom Driberg was employed by Private Eye as a compiler of obscene crosswords, it was noted that on one occasion the prize was won by a Mrs Rosalind Runcie of St Albans.

I wish I could have known her.

Obit du jour: Peter Lunn

A classic. Let's start with this fabulous opener, shall we?

Peter Northcote Lunn was born on November 15 1914 into British skiing aristocracy. His grandfather, Sir Henry Lunn, was a one-time missionary who, having failed to convert the Indians to Methodism, moved to Switzerland, where he embarked on encouraging the British to ski.

Then let's move on to the part where he becomes a "gentleman spy" after WWII, using the tunnels under Vienna (a la The Third Man)"to tap into the underground cables which the Soviets used to communicate."

He even bought a villa on the route of the cable that linked the Soviet headquarters in Vienna with the city’s airport and its overall command station for Austria at St Pölten. From the villa, his team could excavate undisturbed.

If I am ever a spy, I would like to spy from my Austrian villa, though he did say, "You think it’s going to be all wine, women and song. Well, let me tell you, old boy, it’s all beer, bitches and broadcasting.”

He went on to serve as head of station in Bonn, and during the 1960s in Beirut, where he enjoyed skiing at The Cedars, a resort where, as he recalled, discipline in the lift queues improved dramatically after an attendant shot dead the two worst queue jumpers. Even so, it was “not so stimulating as Mürren”, and throughout his years in the service he always brought his family to Mürren for a month at Christmas.

Oh, and let us not forget the books he wrote: "The author of several technical books about skiing, in 1947 Lunn published a novel, Evil in High Places, about a psychotic mountaineer."

Oh my yes. Simply marvelous. Enjoy.

Obit du jour: Rose Robertson

A spy obit, and so much more. Let's start with this great sentence:

After leaving school, she took a series of secretarial jobs, but her unremarkable existence changed dramatically during the war when she was recruited into SOE and later parachuted into Nazi-occupied France.

Yes, that would change one's existence. While there, she worked with "two young gay anti-Nazi fighters," which leads us to stage two:

In 1965 she took in two young male lodgers. On eventually learning that they were gay and had suffered because of their parents’ homophobic attitudes, Rose Robertson set up Parents Enquiry. This was the first organisation in Britain — and possibly the world — dedicated to advising and supporting parents and their lesbian, gay and bisexual children. She ran it almost single-handedly, without payment, from her home in south-east London until the 1990s.

Perhaps the best part of the story is that Parents Enquiry no longer exists, in some measure because it's no longer needed. And in some measure it's no longer needed because she offered it.

Obits du jour: Agents and spies

I couldn't resist any more and wanted to bring to your attention two obituaries from the past couple of days.

I just saw this one for Charles Gittens, the first black Secret Service agent, who joined the service in 1956. By 1971, when he was named the head of the Washington bureau (OK, wow), "only 37 of the Secret Service's 1,200 agents were black." I wonder what the situation is like now.

He just sounds impressive as all get-out. Love this snippet: "When asked about the chances of being shot as a Secret Service agent, Gittens reckoned he was 'a hell of a lot safer being a Secret Service man that I would be driving cabs in either New York or Chicago'."

OK, and let's just hear it for The Telegraph--in, may I remind you, ENGLAND--for this terrific full-on obit. There's nothing in the NY Times (yet), and the Washington Post--for SHAME--has a reprint of an AP wire story. Just embarrassing, the state of our obituaries.

The Telegraph also did a great write-up for Nancy Wake, aka the White Mouse, who was "famed as a resourceful, dauntless Resistance leader, who topped the Gestapo’s most-wanted list and had saved hundreds of Allied lives." The ending is rather poignant, however, as they report, "In old age Nancy Wake was to be found on a leather stool in the hotel bar most mornings, nursing the first of the day’s five or six gin and tonics." But I suppose if you're in your 80's and have done as much living as she has, why not.

Obit du jour: John Herivel

John Herivel was one of the code breakers at Bletchley Park during WWII (I'd love to visit there someday), and the creator of the Herivel Tip:

Herivel realised that lazy operators would move the rotors by only a few letters – or not even move them at all – and that the indicators would all cluster around the original settings: "If the intercept sites could send us the indicators of all the first messages of the day for the individual German operators, there was a sporting chance that they would cluster around the ring settings for the day."

That would allow the codebreakers to narrow down the possibilities from 17,576 to a couple of dozen settings, which they could test out individually by hand. "The next day I went back to Hut 6 in a very excited state and told my colleagues of this idea. 'Oh, brilliant,' they all said."

It wasn't laziness, actually, but stress and overwork that did it:

Welchman had it tested out daily, but it did not work until two months later, in May 1940, as the Germans invaded France and the operators came under pressure of combat. Then the Herivel Tip worked – "It was a very exciting moment," Herivel later recalled.

...in typical British understatement.

The thing I love about this is that Herivel was recruited as a mathemetician, but had his insight because he understood what people would do. Numbers do not manipulate themselves.

Teaser Tuesday, October 5

Our two-sentence teaser this week is from The Spy Wore Red by Aline Romanos--or, as it says on the cover, Aline, Countess of Romanones. I don't think this teaser gives away too much:

"This is the first school of espionage in the United States. And you're here to be converted into...S...P...I...E...S."

Does it make a difference if I tell you the subtitle is My Adventures as an Undercover Agent in World War II?

Yeah, like that. Fun and fabulous.

For more details about Teaser Tuesday, check out the Mother Blog, Should Be Reading.

Teaser Tuesday, May 11

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week's teaser is from my WWII reading series (now that I'm on my second book, I guess it's officially a "series"): The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington. What a combination! We've got WWII, YA literature and espionage in one 350-page package!

Here's the teaser:

Never one to follow the rules, be it at school or at the embassy, Dahl was always getting up to some kind of mischief, whether it was filching expensive cigars from his boss's office and passing them around, or sending self-aggrandizing missives to Marsh written on the thick, buff-colored British Embassy stationery and carrying the official red wax seal. His favorite pastime was lampooning the mannered style of his country's wartime representatives, particularly that of the British ambassador, the first Earl of Halifax, an old Etonian who even his erudite information officer, Isaiah Berlin, an Oxford philosopher, described as "being not of this century."

He sounds like one of his cheeky characters, doesn't he?

***

Previously on Teaser Tuesday: I finished and greatly enjoyed David Carkeet's From Away. I reviewed it and other Carkeet books here.

Quote of the day

During term time Marguerite continued to study in Paris, but at half-term and holidays she would resume her spying.

From this obituary for Marguerite Garden.

Baroness Park of Monmouth

Regular readers of this blog will know that, besides my obsession with obits, there is a particular subgenre to which I am drawn as a moth to the flame: the spy obit. There's something about all the skullduggery and/or derring-do suddenly being revealed that makes those obits particularly appealing.

Such a one is the life story of Baroness Park of Monmouth, which is an excellent name to begin with. On my reader feed, I then saw, "Highest-ranking female spy ever to work for MI6 who operated in Africa, Cold War Moscow, Hanoi and even Outer Mongolia," and I knew I had a total winner.

Born Daphne Park and raised in Africa, "Her drink of choice was Earl Grey tea, 'stirred not shaken', as she put it." Oh, lovely.

The quotes are probably the best part of the obit. A few highlights:

She was realistic about her capacity to conduct "honeytrap" operations, noting: "Do I look like Mata Hari?"

On one occasion, when living alone [in the Belgian Congo], she chased off an intruder by leaning out of her window and shouting: "I am a witch! And if you don't instantly go away your hands and feet will fall off!"

On another occasion she was driving a Land Rover when she saw a machete-wielding mob coming towards her. She jumped out, stuck her head under the bonnet and told her potential attackers: "Thank goodness you've come along – I think I have a problem with my carburettor." The men laid down their weapons and offered their assistance.

"I always looked just like a fat missionary, which was very useful," she said in later life. "Missionaries get around, you know."

Enjoy.

Spy vs. Spy

A study in contrasts in the obits this week.

First I saw this obit of Nicolae Plesita. You know it's going to be bad when the headline is "Feared Romanian Securitate Chief Plesita Dies." No watering down with how nice he was to puppies; just flat-out ruthless.

In post-communist Romania, Plesita continued to attract attention with his revelations from the Communist period, and showed no remorse for having crushed anti-communist dissent.

Several times, he described how he beat up dissident writer Paul Goma and dragged him around Securitate cells by his beard.

Yeah, just not a good guy.

On the other hand, there's your friendly Los Angeles real estate agent, Maria Liu, whose obituary is absolutely fascinating. She was part of the underground resistance in Slovakia during WWII. She was a courier, once transporting a short-wave radio in a suitcase, fluent in five languages, and helped American and British OSS agents get to the Russian lines in--wait for it!--Bucharest, Romania. "After reaching Bucharest, Romania, on March 1, Liu was flown to OSS headquarters in Italy, where 'she was put on Army status so she could get paid,' said Downs."

The story ends with the tidbit that "Liu, who became a U.S. citizen in 1952, worked for many years as a real estate agent." Who knows how many stories there are like this. First Julia Child, now this. And when we look back, will we be impressed or appalled?