This edited article about America originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 618 published on 17 November 1973.

Icons of America: the White House with Stars and Stripes and Abraham Lincoln by Angus McBride

You have seen the place many times in news-pictures and on television in recent months. A big room, the walls hung with drapes and the national flag at one end. A row of tables littered with microphones, blotters, ash-trays, pens and files, and opposite it, another row of tables bearing the same debris. The rest of the space filled with rows of chairs, television cameras and cables and a throng of men and women moving purposefully around the sides. It is the Caucus Room in the Senate buildings in Washington, where the Watergate hearings have taken place. Twenty years ago it was the scene of confrontations which were equally dramatic and equally damaging to America. For 1953 and 1954 were the years of the investigations of “subversion,” when a loud-mouthed bully could ruin anyone he chose with the words: “I suspect you of being or having been a Communist.”

His name was Joe McCarthy and he was a rough and ready senator from Wisconsin. He bullied you one minute and slapped you on the back the next. He made you relax with a joke and then accused you of being a traitor. He was the master of the political smear, the innuendo, and the unsupported accusation. What is more he knew how to get them into print or on to a television screen. Yet for those two years many people in America believed that “McCarthyism was Americanism.”

Anti-Communism in America had grown since the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War. In intellectual and artistic circles Communism had had a mild vogue in the ‘thirties but the size of the party in America was still very small. Nevertheless labour disputes helped to bring fear of it to the surface. Then between 1948 and 1950 several spies were arrested. Amongst those caught were Alger Hiss and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were the first spies to be shot in peace time. Suddenly, fear of Communist infiltration turned into panic.

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This edited article about aviation originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 609 published on 15 September 1973.

Amelia Earhart in a Lockheed Electra on her last and fatal flight

On the third of July, 1937, people all over the world opened their morning newspapers and read banner headlines that screamed of an amazing disaster. “Amelia Missing,” “Lady Lindy Vanishes,” “Earhart Crashes?” The stories told of the biggest search in history that was just beginning, of the hopes and possibilities of survival and urged prayers on behalf of the missing flyers.

Who was this woman who had captured the interest of the world; what had she been doing and where had she gone?

To tell the story of Amelia Earhart, we should go back to an air-show in California just after the First World War in 1918. Among the spectators was an attractive girl – tall, slim, blonde and freckled – who was nearing her twenty-first birthday. Her father was amused by her enthusiasm and allowed her to go up for a spin in one of the biplanes. The pilot answered all her questions, including how long it took to learn to fly, and then she was back with her father. That night over dinner, she told him that she intended to try to learn to fly and was going to get a job with a local telephone company to pay for the lessons. Remember that there were hardly any women flyers at all in the world at this time. But her father didn’t stand in her way. So, after a few lessons, Amelia Earhart became a pilot.

The first thing that she wanted was actually to look like a pilot so she carried on saving up money until she could afford a proper leather flying jacket – something that was to become almost a trademark with her. She was concerned that it looked too new so she wore it to bed for a few nights until it looked suitably worn.

Her mother bought Amelia a second hand plane and she spent every spare moment in the air. By 1924 she was one of the most experienced women pilots in the world and had broken the Women’s Altitude Record. “Firsts” came naturally to Amelia Earhart. In 1928 she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, travelling as a passenger with Wilmer Stultz.

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This edited article about espionage originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 899 published on 14 April 1979.

Redl was collecting letters containing large sums of money from Tsarist Russia, by Clive Uptton

In the years before the First Great War, Vienna, capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, still held much of its old splendour and romance. But these were mostly for the rich and the high-born, and for the army officers, swaggering in their elegant uniforms. For the poor, life was drab.

One of the few who were able to rise above humble beginnings was Alfred Redl. By sheer determination he acquired an excellent education, specialising in military history and languages. In due course he enlisted in the army.

Redl so impressed his officers that he was granted a commission, though it was almost unheard of for a man of his background to become an officer. Soon the new officer’s impressive qualities attracted the interest of General Baron von Giesl, head of Military Security. When a vacancy occurred for the position of chief of the Intelligence Department in Vienna, Redl was chosen to fill the appointment.

Redl, who never married, seemed to justify Giesl’s faith in him. His methods were thorough, and ahead of his time. They included the use of concealed cameras and the recording of conversations on gramophone discs.

After Redl had held the position for about five years, Giesl was given command of the army in Prague – now capital of Czechoslovakia, but then under Austrian rule. He arranged for Redl to be promoted to colonel and appointed to his staff in Prague.

In truth, Redl was far from worthy of Giesl’s confidence. His determination to escape from the poverty of his youth had bred in him an insatiable hunger for money. Within a year or two of taking up his Intelligence appointment, he had sold his services to Austria’s greatest potential foe – Tsarist Russia.

He achieved enough genuine successes to impress his superiors, but meanwhile he had become Russia’s chief spy in Austria. Even worse, he had betrayed Austrian spies to the Russians.

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This edited article about espionage originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 897 published on 31 March 1979.

Communism and Russian might on show in a military parade

Britain’s intelligence chiefs – the spy-catchers in the cloak-and-dagger business of counter-espionage – were agog with excitement. The news had just arrived that a Russian Intelligence officer named Konstantin Volkov was willing to defect.

Volkov had called at the British Consulate-General in Istanbul and asked for political asylum. In exchange for money, he was prepared to hand over the equivalent of a barrel of dynamite in that nether-world of secrets – a list of the Russian agents working in Britain.

The year was 1946. The war was over and, despite the fact that Russia had been Britain’s ally against Nazi Germany, the free world was beginning to mistrust the intentions of the Communists. So Volkov, with his list of Russian spies, was a catch.

Harold “Kim” Philby, the highly efficient head of the anti-Communist section of the British Secret Service, studied Volkov’s request. A few vital days later, he was aboard the plane that was to take him to Istanbul and an interview with the Russian defector.

Hardly had Philby arrived in Turkey when Volkov was suddenly picked up by Russian officials and bundled into a Soviet plane without having handed over the spy list. He has never been seen or heard of since.

Philby, it was thought later, had badly mishandled the affair by exposing Volkov to a Russian swoop. In the light of the events that were revealed years afterwards, that was hardly surprising. For the man who was Russia’s chief spy in Britain – and who must have been on top of Volkov’s list – was Kim Philby.

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This edited article about the Second World War originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 896 published on 24 March 1979.

Cornelia Knapp, the daring American agent, walking down a street in Ankara under the suspicious gaze of the Gestapo Chief at the German Embassy. Picture by Severino Baraldi

The day undercover agent Cornelia Knapp was assigned to the Cicero Case she knew that her life would be in constant danger. But, as a wartime member of the American Intelligence Service, she welcomed the opportunity to expose the Turkish-based spy who was endangering the Allied cause.

She obtained the job of private secretary to an attache at the German Embassy in Ankara, Ludwig Moyzisch – a Gestapo agent. For weeks she noted everyone who contacted him and eventually her suspicions landed on someone who had been overlooked by other agents.

The man she suspected of selling British and American secrets to the Germans was Elyesa Bazna, the valet to the British Ambassador in Turkey, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen. She investigated Bazna’s background and daily routine, and what she discovered read like a first-class thriller.

Each morning at precisely 7.30, Bazna woke up Sir Hughe with a glass of fresh orange juice. As soon as the Ambassador had drunk this he was ready to commence his duties for the day. He had a high regard for his valet and considered him a perfect gentleman’s gentleman. But Bazna – a Turk who had been born in Yugoslavia – detested his work, was contemptuous of its low pay, and was determined to even the score, as he put it.

It was the autumn of 1943 and Ankara, the Turkish capital, was a city of tension and strain. The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was anxious for Turkey to side with the Allies in their fight against Hitler – and messages about this were passed between Churchill, President Roosevelt of America, and the Russian dictator, Joseph Stalin.

Ankara seethed with spies and swam with rumours. It was an ideal situation for someone as bold and mercenary as Bazna to take advantage of. So he obtained a Leica camera and set about photographing British secret documents, which were kept in a red strong-box in Sir Hughe’s study.

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This edited article about World War Two originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 892 published on 24 February 1979.

The British Identity card was introduced in September 1939 and was not abolished until February 1952, by John Keay

If anyone in Britain needed a reminder that the Second World War had really started, it came at the end of September, 1939. It was then that the National Registration Act came into force.

Civilians resident in the United Kingdom were required to complete a registration form, and to be issued with an identity card.

In many countries carrying an identity document is accepted practice, in peace or war. But the British do not take readily to the idea. To be obliged to produce a card whenever some official asks to see it smacks of the “police state”. Throughout the war, however, and for some years afterwards, everyone not in the Forces had to carry one.

The civilian card bore the name and address of the bearer, with a serial number and “class code”. The latter indicated what form of citizenship the bearer held.

Instructions on the card ordered its production “on demand by a police officer in uniform, or a member of HM Armed Forces in uniform on duty.” Breach of this order, or others concerning the carrying and safe-keeping of the card was “punishable by a fine or imprisonment or both.”

During most of the time that the Act was operating, people had little to complain about. But when the threat of German invasion was at its height, in 1940, it was a common experience to be stopped and asked for one’s card.

Almost anywhere in the country, motorists were likely to find road-blocks. These were often manned by members of the newly-formed Local Defence Volunteers, soon renamed the Home Guard. Such incidents became less frequent as the menace receded. But anyone entering a military zone, or approaching a vital industrial installation, needed to have his card ready.

Government and local authority offices also found it convenient to ask for the production of identity cards when dealing with the public. This was one reason why the system did not cease with the end of hostilities in 1945.

It was not until 21st February, 1952, that identity cards were abolished. At last the British could feel that things were back to normal.

This edited article about political conspiracy originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 883 published on 16 December 1978.

The barbarity of the punishment meted out to the conspirators roused the crowd to great anger, by Ken Petts

To the people in the court room, Arthur Thistlewood seemed capable of almost any crime. Sallow, thin-lipped, with the blazing eyes of a fanatic, he appeared to be just the kind of man who would plot to murder the senior members of the Government – and then seize power for himself and his followers.

As he stood defiantly in the dock on that day in 1820, his narrow features were distorted with hate and resentment. A former Army officer who had fought in the Napoleonic Wars of 1803-15, he had his own military-style sense of honour. And he did not believe in betraying his companions.

But this did not stop a companion betraying him. One of his gang of would-be assassins, George Edwards, was in the pay of the Government, and it was due to him that Thistlewood and four of his henchmen were on trial for their lives.

“This Edwards,” stated Thistlewood bitterly, “poor and penniless, lived without a bed to lie upon. Straw was his resting place and his only covering a blanket.

“Owing to his bad character and swindling conduct, he was driven out by his landlord. Some time after this, he called upon his landlord again. But now he was dressed as a lord. From this period I date his career as a Government spy.”

According to the Attorney-General, the assassination plot had been hatched in a cowshed loft in London’s Cato Street, near Marble Arch, on the night of 23rd February that year. It was there, by candlelight, that 46-year-old Thistlewood and his cronies aired their grievances against England.

As revolutionaries, they believed that all Governments – except those of the people – were autocratic and repressive, and that the cabinet ministers, headed by the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, should be ruthlessly destroyed.

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This edited article about English literature originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 860 published on 8 July 1978.

A scene from The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. Picture by James E McConnell

They were difficult times for England, with scoundrels everywhere, busily intent on chipping away at the cornerstone of the Empire. Villainous Germans were eagerly fomenting trouble in Mesopotamia, anarchists were planning to assassinate the Greek Premier, and in Africa, a black clergyman was trying to bring about an uprising. As if all this was not enough for the harassed Foreign Office to deal with, there were traitors in high places in London itself.

But at least those who ruled the country could console themselves with the fact that they had Richard Hannay, an Old Etonian who spoke 12 languages, was a dead shot with a Mauser and a dab hand at disguise – an essential talent when you did not know when you might be called upon to disguise yourself as a bargee on the Danube, or as a Dutch mining engineer.

It was Hannay and his friends upon whom the Government relied when there was a spot of trouble brewing. It was Hannay who, time and time again, went off to save the situation, purring away in his Bentley on yet another adventure, much to the delight of the reading public who had been his devoted admirers ever since the first Hannay yarn was published in 1915.

The author of these highly entertaining stories was John Buchan, one of the most remarkable men of his time. A First Class classics scholar, a barrister, an administrator in South Africa, and, in his final years, the governor-general of Canada, he was essentially a part-time writer. Yet he managed to produce almost 70 books as well as innumerable articles before he died in 1940 at the age of 64.

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This edited article about French literature and politics originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 859 published on 1 July 1978.

Zola was an unlikely looking warrior of words, by C L Doughty

They found him in his nightshirt, his head lolling against the dais which supported a huge and tasteless antique bed. On the bed itself, unconscious, lay his wife. She revived, but Emile Zola, the novelist, and one of the central figures in one of the most celebrated scandals of all time, was already dead, poisoned by coal fumes from a blocked chimney. In the police report, the tragedy was put down as “a blockage caused by too infrequent sweeping.”

Until recently, there seemed no reason to think that Zola’s death was anything other than a tragic accident which might have been avoided with a little more care. One school of thought, however, now thinks that Zola may well have been murdered.

In 1954, a strange story came out of France which suggested that a chimney sweep deliberately blocked, and then, after Zola’s death, unblocked the chimney. According to the evidence that was published in a Paris newspaper, a chimney sweep had confessed to the murder privately before his death, in 1927.

It seems an unlikely story, yet Zola had received hundreds of letters threatening him with death by all manner of means, including gunshot and dynamite. To say that he was unpopular in many quarters would be an understatement.

But why should anyone want to murder one of France’s greatest novelists? A bearded little man with a pince-nez, he looked the very acme of quiet respectability. The appearance, however, was deceptive. Inside Zola burned a great passion for truth and justice which he pursued with a savage integrity that was completely at odds with his mild outward appearance.

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This edited article about English literature originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 856 published on 10 June 1978.

The killing of Kit Marlowe, by Angus McBride

Christopher Marlowe was one of England’s greatest poets and playwrights. He was also once a spy in Elizabeth I’s secret service.

When Marlowe was a student at Cambridge University, he was almost expelled for his prolonged absences during term-time. It was only when the Privy Council wrote a letter to the university authorities explaining that his work as a government agent took him abroad, that he was saved from being sent down.

He then turned his hand to writing for the theatre and his plays were an immediate success. Yet he was never far from where the action was. In 1589, he was put inside Newgate prison after a duel in which a man was killed. After another clash with the law three years later, he was bound over to keep the peace.

Much of the violence in his own life overflowed into his plays, which are rarely performed today because of the difficulty of staging the gory effects that are required.

Marlowe died as he lived. On 29th May, 1593, he was stabbed to death in a pub brawl in Deptford, London. He was 29 years old.