Ellic Howe’s ‘The Documentary Weapon’ and Forgery in Muriel Spark’s The Bachelors (1960)
Beatriz Lopez explores connections between the PWE’s use of forgery in wartime propaganda campaigns and Spark’s later interest in the practice…
Posts by SOE agent in the field
Listen very carefully, I shall say this only once
Guy Woodward finds echoes of PWE campaigns in a classic sitcom After two years researching the Political Warfare Executive, I am…
“Jangling caterwauls”: Muriel Spark and the scrambler telephone
Beatriz Lopez explores Spark’s wartime use of a secure telephone and considers the device’s later disturbing reappearance in her novel The Hothouse…
Anti-malarial disinformation
James Smith finds disturbing echoes of a British wartime disinformation campaign in recent White House press conferences In August 1941, British…
VE Day: the PWE and the POWs
Document of the Month: FO 898/330 James Smith and Guy Woodward on the PWE’s re-education of POWs “The Italian prisoners are gratified at…
Postcard propaganda: Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin
Document of the month: FO 898/123 Guy Woodward finds echoes of PWE campaigns in Hans Fallada’s novel Alone in Berlin One of…
Books in disguise: what to do during the Allied invasion
Document of the month: FO 898/484 Guy Woodward finds an invasion manual disguised as a novel A few months ago I wrote…
SOE’s ‘virtual reality’ resistance movement
Document of the month: FO 898/28 Guy Woodward investigates a fictional Balkan resistance movement, and ponders the parallels between propaganda work…
Muriel Spark and the Ethics of Deception: a didactic approach to black propaganda
Beatriz Lopez finds traces of wartime moral dilemmas in Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Following the closure of the PWE…
Cartoons and propaganda: Osbert Lancaster at the PWE
Document of the month: FO 898/507 Guy Woodward investigates the involvement of Daily Express cartoonist Osbert Lancaster in wartime propaganda This booklet entitled Moffes-Spiegel measures…
