Books: Papa Spy
British spy Tom Burns succeeds in keeping Spain’s dictator Franco out of WW2, but can’t save the life of actor Leslie Howard *** 3 stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
Papa Spy, tracing father's secret life in the British Secret Service
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Gosh!TV) 12/19/2009 – “In the case of Papa Spy, I got two significant breaks,” says Papa Spy author Jimmy Burns. “The first was when I discovered hundreds of letters written by my father and secretly kept in a battered old suitcase by a cousin of the Queen, Ann Bowes-Lyon. The second was a phone call from a contact in the British security services offering me two big classified files on my father’s wartime spying activities. These showed how Soviet agents who’d infiltrated British intelligence like Kim Philby conducted a secret campaign against my father.”
Papa Spy is about Tom Burns, known as a rising star of British publishing, who led a secret life. Some of Burns friends were G. K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, the artist Eric Gill and the poet David Jones. When war was declared in 1939, Burns joined the Ministry of Information, also known as the propaganda wing of the secret service before it became MI5.
Burns says that as a child he had suspected his father was involved in something, a suspicion that grew the day he discovered a spy camera and a WW2 army pistol hidden in his desk. “When he died in 1995, I was left with too many questions unanswered about the friends he’d made, the women he’d loved, and what he had really got up during that part of history so crucial to his generation and our freedom, WW2,” says Burns. “I’ve won newspaper awards in the UK as an investigative journalist, but this investigation has proved my biggest challenge so far.”
“The first priority was to trace survivors of WW2 who were linked to the story and talk to them before they died from illness or old age,” says Burns. “Sadly it is a generation that’s fast departing from this world.” Burns was lucky, finding key witnesses to the story, from an American model who worked for the US intelligence agencies to a secretary in the British embassy who had tried to draw his father into a honeytrap. Burns also tracked down a suspect Soviet spy who had worked for the British, and an orphan from the Spanish Civil War who had worked for his father as a secret messenger.
“Research for documents took me deep into classified areas like the personal archive of Spain’s late dictator General Franco, and secret intelligence dossiers,” says Burns, whose father was sent to Madrid as press attache at the British Embassy. His mission was to keep Franco from joining either side of the war. In doing so he made enemies and was involved in the fatal trip of Leslie Howard to Portugal and Spain.
Burns did a lot of work researching correspondence involving some of his father’s friends, letters he discovered at Georgetown University and at Boston College. However, the jackpot was a trove of love letters kept by the beautiful Ann Bowes-Lyon, cousin of the then Queen. Burns’ father and Bowes-Lyon had a passionate love affair before and during WW2.
Burns says he conceived the idea for the book while sitting by his father’s death bed. Papa Spy would take fourteen years to finish. “There is I think a moment at some stage in the research and writing of most serious books when the author senses panic,” says Burns. “Then one is blessed with luck or inspiration or a combination of both.”
Burns says he’s in preliminary discussions with a major Spanish film producer and with the BBC about the possibility of turning the book into a documentary or TV series. “The book has generated a lot of interest in Europe,” says Burns. “In the UK, I’ve found myself in demand to speak about the book at literary festivals, universities, libraries, and bookshops where as an author I can come to face to face with my readers. One of the most interesting events had been speaking to some of the top students in Britain who are doing intelligence studies at Cambridge University, quite a few Americans, no doubt future employees of the CIA.”
“The book is also generating a lot of interest in Spain where RandomHouse/Debate is preparing a big marketing campaign prior to the launch of the Spanish language version: Papa Espia, in February 2010, Says Burns. “I get quite a lot of fan mail. A curious email came in the other day from a British lady who said I’d inspired her to try and find out more about the father she never really knew but who she suspects was a Soviet agent, and asking me to help.”
Papa Spy unlocks a fascinating history of WW2 and Spain. Burns love affairs and are intriguing. Papa Spy will appeal to readers who enjoy history.
Editor Bill Swainson at Bloomsbury UK oversaw the writing of the book and proofreading.
Burns is currently writing a review of a massive new book on the history of MI5, and exploring ideas for a new book of his own. He does most of his writing from the top floor of the house he lives in, a converted flat with a bedroom, bathroom, and study. “It’s in south London near the river,” says Burns. “I can look out at some of the trees of the local park and most of my neighborhood from my study. It keeps me in touch with the real world. I find it difficult to throw things away and don’t trust the computer to store everything so I work immersed in a jungle of paperwork, books, photographs and sentimental bric-a-brac. Even the bed is covered with books and papers.”
Burns was born in Madrid, Spain.
Papa Spy: Love, Faith, and Betrayal in Wartime Spain Jimmy Burns
- Hardcover, 416 pages, Publisher: Walker & Company (December 22, 2009)
- Language: English, ISBN: 9780802717962 $26.00
- www.jimmy-burns.com