Art and Intelligence

Laurence, Patricia

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-26415-4_7

Patricia Laurence²

Part of the book series: Literary Lives ((LL))

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Abstract

This chapter describes how Bowen lent herself as a writer to spy on neutral Ireland, 1940–1941, and wrote 200 reports for the British Ministry of Information that reached the desk of Winston Churchill. Her Reports from Eire, extensively researched here, reveal her to be an independent thinker with divided loyalties to England and Ireland. Bowen becomes a cultural flashpoint in Ireland upon the revelation of her spying in 1990s, revealing much about the culture and politics of her time as well as the country in which she is perceived.

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Notes

1.
Butler, “Writer as Independent Spirit,” 527.
2.
See Hepburn, ed. Listening In.
3.
Bowen, “Frankly Speaking.”
4.
Butler, “Writer as Independent Spirit,” 527.
5.
Connolly, “Comment,” 9.
6.
IGS, viii.
7.
MT, 129.
8.
O’Halpin, Spying on Ireland, 2.
9.
A wartime rumor that Irish ports were being mined in cooperation with the English is discredited by historian, Thomas Hachey, who asserts there is no evidence for the charge (e-mail to PL, December 6, 2014).
10.
Wills, That Neutral Island, 148.
11.
McMahon, British Spies and Irish Rebels, 378. Examined British and Irish intelligence archives, 2011.
12.
Edward Corse.
13.
Jordan, How Will the Heart Endure, 98.
14.
EB to VW, July 1940, SU.
15.
Notes on Eire, July 13, 1940.
16.
McLaine, Ministry of Morale, 39.
17.
See Phyllis Lassner, “Women Writers,” in Espionage and Exile.
18.
Arnold interview.
19.
Jordan, How Will the Heart Endure? 210.
20.
McMahon, British Spies and Irish Rebels, 375.
21.
Betjeman to Rodgers, (MOI), TNA PRO INF August 10, 1941.
22.
TNA, INF1/539. Lord Davidson to John Rodgers, July 2, 1941.
23.
Betjeman, Letters, 216.
24.
Mahon, “MacNeice, the War and the BBC.”
25.
MacNeice, “Neutrality.”
26.
“Budgie.”
27.
Jenkins, introduction to Collected Reports, ix.
28.
“Summer Night,” CS, 588.
29.
“Summer Night,” CS, 599.
30.
Bowen, “Disloyalties,” 61.
31.
HD, 22, 29.
32.
“Disloyalties,” Lee, The Mulberry Tree, 61.
33.
“Disloyalties,” Lee, The Mulberry Tree, 60.
34.
LS, 36.
35.
“Disloyalties,” The Mulberry Tree, 61.
36.
City of Angels, 161.
37.
City of Angels, 137.
38.
The City of Angels, 197.
39.
The City of Angels, 40, 48–49, 152–153.
40.
O’Faolain, Vive Moi, 310, 311.
41.
See also lively account by Feigel, Love Charm of Bombs.
42.
Ibid., 311.
43.
SOF to Peter Davidson, Atlantic Monthly’s editor, May 7, 1974, UCC, BL/L/PD, 1963–1974, 272.
44.
Yeats, “The Circus Animal’s Desertion,” Complete Poems, 336.
45.
BC, 92.
46.
Clifford and Lane, Notes on Eire, eight reports: July 13, 1940 (not in SIW, in Aubane supplement “More of Her Espionage Reports”); July 21, 1940 (not in SIW); July 31, 1940; August 14, 1940 (not in SIW); November 9, 1940; February 9, 1942; July 12, 1942; and July 31, 1942. SIW: seven reports: November 9, 1940; April 12, 1941 (not in Aubane); February 9, 1942; February 20, 1942 (not in Aubane); July 12, 1942; July 19, 1942 (not in Aubane); and July 25–31, 1942. The differences in the number of letters in these two editions, and the sometime careless editing by the Aubane Society suggest the need for further study.
47.
SIW, 52–99.
48.
Fisk, In Time of War, ix.
49.
Christopher, Defense of the Realm, 1.
50.
EB to VW, n.d. (ca. December) 1941, SU.
51.
Ibid.
52.
There were varied views of Irish “neutrality.” Thomas Hachey views it as deValera’s pragmatic, strategic, and at times, rhetorical policy. Churchill’s criticisms of deValera’s obstinacy earned a reply from de Valera when he asserted that the independence of a still-wounded Ireland, and “ensured that neutrality [during the war] would henceforth be worn as a badge of honor by Irish nationalists of every hue” (“Rhetoric and Reality,” 37).
53.
See Porcelli, “Between British Commitment and Irish Neutrality.”
54.
TNA PREM 453/2.
55.
SIW, 77.
56.
Bowen, review, Spectator, September 5, 1941, WWF, 118.
57.
Butler, “Invader Wore Slippers,” 375–76, 383–384.
58.
Fisk, In Time of War, 431.
59.
SIW, 60, 59, 81, 67.
60.
Ibid.
61.
McMahon notes that Frank McDermott and Seanad Eireann were the only other members of Parliament who favored Irish entry into the war.
62.
SIW, 52–53.
63.
Ibid., 60.
64.
Fisk, In Time of War, 423.
65.
Bowen, Notes on Eire, 11.
66.
Bowen, “Eire.”
67.
SIW, 59.
68.
Ibid., 81.
69.
Ibid., 67.
70.
HD, 63, 23.
71.
Bowen, “Careless Talk,” IGS, 108. Porcelli’s research reveals that the slogan “Careless Talk” appeared on 2.5 million posters from 1940 on, along with other slogans: “Don’t forget, the wall has ears,” and “Keep it under your hat.”
72.
Lane and Clifford, “Elizabeth Bowen: A ‘Debate’ in The Irish Examiner.” Letters including those of Martin Mansergh and Jack Lane: http://aubanehistoricalsociety.org/irishexaminerbowendebate.pdf. Accessed May 2015.
73.
LCW, 389.
74.
Allan Hepburn also referenced Bowen’s participation in “War in the Archives.”
75.
Strand Film Co. to EB, December 21, 1942, HRC.
76.
PPT, 13. Hepburn’s research reveals that MOI paid Bowen £115 in 1944–1945; £117.12.0 in 1946; and £21.3.0 in 1946–1947. HRC 12.5–6.
77.
CI, 221–225.
78.
Bluemel, 136.
79.
Bowen, “Paris Peace Conference,” 66.
80.
Schwabe, “Literary Criticism.” Gratitude to Jonathan Laurence for translation of parts of this dissertation on the British book-printing program in postwar Germany.
81.
Bowen’s books are listed in Alan Bance, ed., The Cultural Legacy of the British Occupation in Germany, 120.
82.
Smith, British Writers and MI5 Surveillance, 57.
83.
Noel Barber wrote The War of the Running Dogs about the Malay Emergency, violent conflicts between the Commonwealth and the Communist party in Malaysia: he was engaged in a British propaganda mission in the country.
84.
Noel Barber to EB, February 4, 1946, HL.
85.
EB to CR, January 22, 1950, LCW, 157–158.
86.
Bowen, “Frankly Speaking.”
87.
Watanabe, “Cold War.”
88.
The Cold War materializing when Bowen visited; the February 1948 coup d’état followed her visit.
89.
Bowen, “Impressions of Czechoslovakia,” in Hepburn, Listening In, 82, 87, 88.
90.
See Stefania Porcelli.
91.
British Council Reports, NGC FW TNA1400990811: Austria BW13; Czechoslovakia BW 27; Hungary BW 36, BNA.
92.
Village Citizen’s Democratic Daily (ca. 1946), miscellaneous clipping file of Brenda Hennessy.
93.
Bowen, “Hungary,” PPT, 87, 90, 87, 90.
94.
See Goldman, “Belated Reception.”
95.
See Gula, “Lost a Bob but Found a Tanner,” Hungarian translations of Joyce’s Ulysses.
96.
McMahon, British Spies and Irish Rebels, 2.
97.
Bowen, “Frankly Speaking.”
98.
Kosofsky-Sedgwick, “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading,” 4. Important points are made about “paranoid” readings and “performative effects” of such positions, applied to Bowen.
99.
Derrida, Archive Fever.
100.
M. E. Antrobus, UK representative in Eire, to John Stephenson, BNA, DO_35/1011/3/001, 178/40.

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City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
Patricia Laurence

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Laurence, P. (2019). Art and Intelligence. In: Elizabeth Bowen. Literary Lives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26415-4_7

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26415-4_7
Published: 09 November 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-26414-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-26415-4
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