I am getting ready for several consecutive weekends of literary festivals in which I can tell readers what they are missing if they fail to subscribe to the TLS. The first is Wigtown in Scotland where I'm talking about family memoirs and the remembering of Roman history, After that comes Henley and Cheltenham and Boston, Mass..
One problem of the literary festival season is facing the complaints of authors and publishers about the books we do not review, review too late or even review too early. It has never been the policy of the TLS to concern ourselves too much with publisher's deadlines, reckoning that sometimes we will be prompt, sometime not, and that what we say matters more than when we say it.
When we get complaints about that - both for jumping a publisher's carefully timed gun and for starting only when, in the marketing department's view, the race is finished - I simply say that we review more books on more subjects than any other paper and everyone should be as happy about that as they can be in these times when increasing numbers of writers are aiming at increasingly reluctant readers.
This week's TLS reminds us, however, that in October 1932, our review of Compton Mackenzie's Greek Memories was exceptionally prompt, bringing down upon us, as the historian of MI6, Keith Jeffery, describes, the wrath of Britain's secret service and an early discovery that the Official Secrets Act had wider implications for the press than the need to prosecute sinister agents of enemy powers.
The review, he reveals, was by Mackenzie's old Oxford friend Harry Pirie-Gordon, who combined the editorship of Burke’s Peerage with being an extremely prolific (though anonymous, as all were until 1974) TLS reviewer. Mackenzie’s book was his third volume of First World War memoirs and it covered his time working in the Eastern Mediterranean for "MI1(c)", the forerunner of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).
Pirie-Gordon noted Mackenzie’s "formidable" documentation and touched lightly on its revelatory aspect, which he thought "interesting, for such widely differing opinions have been expressed and printed about Mackenzie’s organization that it is a useful piece of history to have its composition and scope detailed". Other commentators were less favourably disposed. SIS itself felt that the book jeopardized national security and initiated a process which culminated in Mackenzie’s being tried (and convicted) for contravening the Official Secrets Act. The case, as Jeffery notes, set an early precedent for the sustained efforts which Britain’s security and intelligence agencies have mounted to discourage or prevent former employees from spilling the beans about their secret work.
"In his previous volume of wartime memoirs, First Athenian Memories (1931), Mackenzie had described his first few months in late 1915 working for Cumming’s Bureau. Although he revealed there that "the real object of C’s organization" was "to obtain information about the enemy", he did not provide much detail or further identify Cumming. "The initial of C" (which was a revelation), he wrote, "was invoked to justify everything, but who C was and where C was and what C was and why C was we were not told."
Trouble came with the much more informative Greek Memories. Evidently advance copies had been circulated, for October 27, when the TLS review appeared, was the actual day of publication. Press reaction to the publication focused on its revelations about Cumming. "Mystery Chief of the Secret Service", "Capt ‘C’s’ identity disclosed", trumpeted the Daily Telegraph.
This sensational disclosure prompted Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, who succeeded Cumming as CSS in 1923, to get MI5 to start the process of getting the book banned. By 3 o’clock on September 27, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) had himself telephoned the publishers (Cassell) and, in that informal way so beloved of British Establishment figures, "suggested to them that they might like to withdraw the book, pointing out however that he was merely giving them friendly advice".
The same day Sinclair sent Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent UnderSecretary at the Foreign Office, "a list of some points considered objectionable from the point of view of national interest", which rehearsed the kinds of arguments which would be deployed in similar future prosecutions. The volume blew SIS’s cover, a perennially important concern for the Service. It "blazons the connection between the Passport Control Department \[used for cover for SIS stations abroad\] and the S.S. \[Secret Service\]". While conceding that "this is already known in some quarters", the manner in which it was now explained and emphasized was "highly undesirable".
Mackenzie was told "that there had been a Cabinet meeting at which the Attorney-General had announced I had destroyed the whole Secret Service . . . and that it was going to cost the country at least two million pounds to undo the harm I had done". He was prosecuted under the technical provisions of the Official Secrets Act that covered "communicating to unauthorised persons . . . information which he obtained while holding office under His Majesty". He was legally sunk by the way in which he had assembled the book, cutting and pasting lengthy passages from official documents and telegrams (a fact Pirie-Gordon had noted in his TLS review). Subsequent users of official documents took careful note of this.
When the case went to trial in January 1933, Mackenzie duly pleaded guilty. Extremely good character references for him were produced in court and the judge was persuaded that Mackenzie was "an honourable man" who believed he was "doing no harm" in publishing the documents. The judge also hoped that the case might "do something" to "warn those who are urged to write similar books that they are offences". Declaring that he had "thought deeply over the matter" and "hesitated very much whether I ought to send you to prison", (in the circumstances rather improbably, since the matter had been settled in advance) he imposed a comparatively light fine of £100, as well as ordering Mackenzie to pay £100 towards the costs of the prosecution.
