37. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 11/27/42—RDMSC RD 14/5/1/21.
38. Roald Dahl, Letter to Walt Disney, 12/02/42—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/79.
39. Roald Dahl, Letter to Air Commodore William Thornton, 11/18/42—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/68.
40. Korkis, “The Trouble with Gremlins.”
41. Hamish Hamilton, Letter to Roald Dahl, 08/25/42—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/15.
42. Roald Dahl, Letter to Air Marshall Peck, 12/08/42—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/80.
43. William Teeling, Letter to Roald Dahl, 02/11/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/96.
44. J. B. Hogan, Letter to Roald Dahl, 08/23/42—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/14.
45. Treglown, p. 69.
46. William Teeling, Letter to Roald Dahl, 02/11/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/96.
47. Clement Caines, Letter to Air Commodore William Thornton, 01/25/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/95.
48. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 12/05/42—RDMSC RD 14/5/1/23, and Letter to William Teeling, 03/16/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/107. Eagle Squadrons were RAF Squadrons made up of volunteer American pilots who joined up to fight Hitler before the United States formally entered the war after Pearl Harbor.
49. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 02/13/43—RDMSC 14/5/2/4.
50. Roald Dahl, Letter to William Teeling, 03/16/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/107.
51. C. G. Caines, Asst. Under Secretary of State for Air, Letter to Air Commodore William Thornton, 01/25/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/95.
52. Roald Dahl, Letter to Walt Disney, 01/01/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/85.
53. Roald Dahl, Letter to Walt Disney, 05/19/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/129.
54. Roald Dahl, Stop Picking on Gremlins, MS, 03/09/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/105.
55. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 02/13/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/4.
56. Viscount Halifax, Letter to Roald Dahl, 04/29/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/124.
57. Eleanor Roosevelt, Letter to Roald Dahl, 05/27/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/136.
58. Lucille Ogle, Letter to Roald Dahl, 12/07/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/145.
59. Roy Disney, Letter to Roald Dahl, u.d.—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/154.
60. The RAF Benevolent Fund earned $368 from gremlin merchandising in 1943—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/132.
61. Walt Disney, Letter to Roald Dahl, 05/26/43—RDMSC RD 1/5/1.
62. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 04/17/43—RDMSC 14/5/2/11.
63. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 04/17/43—RDMSC 14/5/2/11.
64. Korkis, “The Trouble with Gremlins.”
65. Walt Disney, Letter to Roald Dahl, 07/02/43—RDMSC RD 1/5/1.
66. Walt Disney Archive cited in Korkis, “The Trouble with Gremlins.”
67. Justice, Justice for Disney, cited in ibid.
68. Walt Disney, Letter to Roald Dahl, 12/18/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/147.
69. Robin Allan, Walt Disney and Europe (London: John Libby & Co., 1999), p. 186.
70. Roy Disney, Letter to Roald Dahl, 04/24/45—RDMSC RD 1/4/1.
71. Roy Disney, Letter to Roald Dahl, 04/17/45—RDMSC RD 1/4/1.
72. Roald Dahl, Letter to J. B. Hogan, 09/03/42—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/23.
73. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 12/15/42—RDMSC RD 14/5/1/24.
74. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 03/23/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/9.
75. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 06/17/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/19.
76. Roald Dahl, Letter to Henry Wallace, 01/13/43—RDMSC RD 15/5.
77. Valerie Pascal, The Disciple and His Devil (New York: Dell Publishing, 1970), p. 72.
78. Ibid., pp. 73–75.
79. Ibid., pp. 83–87.
80. The reference is from a 1947 biography of Wallace by Dwight Macdonald cited in Philip Kopper, Anonymous Giver: A Life of Charles Marsh (Washington, D.C.: Public Welfare Foundation, 2000), p. 77.
81. John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer, the Life and Times of Henry Wallace (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), pp. 134–35.
82. Columbia University Oral History, Reminiscences of Paul H. Appleby, p. 12.
83. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 12/28/42—RDMSC RD 14/5/1/26.
84. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 01/07/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/1.
85. Thomas M. Pryor in the New York Times, Jan. 10, 1943.
86. Andrew R. Kelley in the Washington Times-Herald, Jan. 11, 1943.
87. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 01/07/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/1.
88. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 04/17/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/11. Hawks would also pester Dahl for a screenplay about Guy Gibson and the “Dam Buster” raid, which happened that summer—Roald Dahl, Notes on Los Angeles, 06/24/43—RDMSC RD 1/4/1/139.
89. Roald Dahl, An Eye for a Tooth, later retitled Teat for Tat and finally An African Story when it was included in his first anthology, Over to You.
90. Roald Dahl, Only This, first published in Ladies’ Home Journal, 1944, from Collected Stories, p. 19.
91. Katina, p. 38.
92. The Ginger Cat—RDMSC RD 5/14/1–3.
93. Edward Weeks, Letter to Roald Dahl, 12/20/43—RDMSC RD 1/1/1/82/1.
94. Edward Weeks, Letter to Roald Dahl dated “Lincoln’s birthday,” 02/12/43—RDMSC RD 1/1/1/18.
95. Graham Payn and Sheridan Morley, eds., The Noël Coward Diaries (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982), Jan. 29, 1946, p. 50.
96. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 11/27/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/38.
97. Roald Dahl, Letter to Mr. King, 11/24/43—RDMSC RD 1/1/1/61.
98. Roald Dahl, Letter to Harold Matson, 10/01/42—RDMSC RD 1/2/1/45.
99. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 10/12/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/34.
100. Sheila Lewis Crosby (née St. Lawrence), Conversation with the author, 07/21/08.
101. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 10/12/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/34.
102. Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4: The Hinge of Fate (1950), p. 742.
103. See Ian Colvin, Flight 777 (London: Evans Bros., 1957), and Ronald Howard, In Search of My Father (London: William Kimber & Co., 1981).
104. Cited in José Rey-Ximena, El Vuelo del Ibis (Madrid: Ediciones Facta, 2008).
105. David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 294.
106. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 06/27/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/16.
CHAPTER TEN : Secrets and Lies
1. Roald Dahl, My Year (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), pp. 38–39.
2. Marion Goodman, Conversation with the author, 03/11/07.
3. Lucy Dahl, Conversation with the author, 10/09/08.
4. Roald Dahl, Note in his address book—RDMSC AC 1/185.
5. Ernest Cuneo Papers, Box 107, CIA file—FDR Library, Hyde Park, cited in Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception—British Covert Operations in the US 1939–44 (Washington D.C.: Brassey’s, 1998), pp. 15–16. Cuneo was a young Washington lawyer who had worked closely with the Democratic New York mayor, Fiorello La Guardia. He eventually married a Canadian employee of Stephenson’s who worked at BSC—Jonathan Cuneo, Conversation with the author, 03/20/07.
6. Roald Dahl, Interview for A Man Called Intrepid, CBC Television, 1974.
7. Ivar Bryce, You Only Live Once, Memories of Ian Fleming (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984), pp. 62–63.
8. Joel Raphaelson, ed., The Unpublished David Ogilvy (New York: Crown, 1986), p. 101.
9. Alfhild Hansen, Conversation with the author, 08/07/92.
10. Alfhild Hansen, Conversation with the author, 1997.
11. See Mahl, Desperate Deception, p. 202.
12. H. Montgomery Hyde Papers, Churchill College, Cambridge, 3–21, February 1942.
13. Roald Dahl, Interview for CBC documentary A Man Called Intrepid, 1974.
14. Reginald “Rex” Benson, Diaries, cited in Anthony Cave Brown, “C”: The Secret Life of Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, Spymaster to Winston Churchill (New York: Macmillan, 1987), p. 480.
15. H. G. Nicholas, ed., Washington Despatches 1941–45: Weekly Political Reports from the British Embassy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981), p. 381.
16. Eugene Pulliam quoted in Kopper, Anonymous Giver: A Life of Charles Marsh, p. 37.
17. Antoinette Haskell, Conversation with the author, 01/14/98.
18. Cited in Kopper, Anonymous Giver, p. 66.
19. This was how Roald Dahl described him to his prospective biographer, Stephen Roxburgh—FSG Archives.
20. George Brown, the construction magnate, cited in Kopper, Anonymous Giver, p. 64.
21. Roald Dahl, Letter to Anthony Cave Brown, 10/04/85—RDMSC RD 16/1/2.
22. Roald Dahl, Letter to Charles Marsh, undated, probably early 1944—CMP.
23. Antoinette Haskell, Conversation with the author, 01/14/98.
24. Ralph Ingersoll, But in the Main It’s True (unpublished biography of Charles Marsh), 1975, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
25. Antoinette Haskell, Conversation with the author, 01/14/98.
26. Roald Dahl, Letter to Anthony Cave Brown, 10/04/85—RDMSC RD 16/1/2.
27. Antoinette Haskell, Conversation with the author, 01/14/98.
28. Lord Halifax (Dahl), Letter to “Stanley Marsh,” 12/02/44—CMP.
29. Charles Marsh, Letter to Roald Dahl, 07/27/45—CMP.
30. Antoinette Haskell, Conversation with the author, 01/14/98.
31. Roald Dahl, Letter to Helen Ogden Reid, 06/29/43—RDMSC RD 15/5/96.
32. Ingersoll, But in the Main It’s True.
33. Ibid.
34. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 03/19/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/8.
35. Cited in Jennet Conant, The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), p. 20.
36. Kopper, Anonymous Giver, p. 70.
37. Antoinette Haskell, cited in Conant, The Irregulars, p. 23.
38. Kopper, Anonymous Giver, p. 74.
39. Ralph Ingersoll, But in the Main It’s True, 1975 (unfinished), chap. 8, p. 2, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.
40. Kopper, Anonymous Giver, p. 98.
41. Dahl cited in ibid., p. 70.
42. Ibid., p. 80.
43. Roald Dahl, Letter to Anthony Cave Brown, 10/04/85—RDMSC 1/16/2.
44. Diaries of Henry Agard Wallace, 10/03/44, University of Iowa, Special Collections, Iowa City, Iowa.
45. Roald Dahl, Letter to Anthony Cave Brown, 10/04/85—RDMSC 16/1/2.
46. Henry A. Wallace, Our Job in the Pacific (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1944), p. 24.
47. Roald Dahl, Letter to Anthony Cave Brown, 10/4/85—RDMSC RD 16/1/2.
48. Hull apparently made the comment to the Dutch ambassador, Alexander Loudon. See Nicholas, ed., Washington Despatches 1941–45, p. 376.
49. Diaries of Henry Agard Wallace, 10/03/44, University of Iowa, Box 19, NB 32, p. 2.
50. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 07/17/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/23.
51. Berlin quoted in Nicholas, ed., Washington Despatches 1941–45, p. 250.
52. Cave Brown, “C,” p. 484.
53. Roald Dahl, Letter to Anthony Cave Brown, 10/04/85—RDMSC RD 16/1/2. The first reference to his new rank is found in a letter to his mother, 06/17/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/19.
54. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 06/25/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/20.
55. Roald Dahl, Post War Air Lines—RDMSC RD 15/5.
56. The Air Ministry believed the Arnold-Powers Agreement of June 1942 established that “as a long term policy [the RAF] were led to rely on America for transports while we concentrated on medium and heavy bombers.” See Jeffrey Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 30.
57. Even the Air Ministry in London was forced to conclude that it was out of the question for Great Britain to compete with the United States in civil aviation until at least 1950. For more detail on this complex issue, see ibid., pp. 31–45.
58. Mary Louise Patten, Letter to Joe Alsop, 07/30/43, cited in Conant, The Irregulars, pp. 171–72.
59. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 07/17/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/23.
60. Mary Louise Patten, Letter to Alsop, 07/30/43, cited in Conant, The Irregulars, p. 172.
61. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 07/23/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/24.
62. Mary Louise Patten, Letter to Alsop, 07/30/43, cited in Conant, The Irregulars, p. 172.
63. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 10/12/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/34.
64. Roald Dahl, Letter to William Teeling, 05/31/43—RDMSC RD 15/5/104/1–2.
65. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 06/25/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/20.
66. Roald Dahl, Visit to Hyde Park—RDMSC RD 15/5/94/5.
67. Bill Macdonald, The True Intrepid (Raincoast Books, 2001), p. 244.
68. Dahl, Visit to Hyde Park—RDMSC RD 15/5/94/6.
69. Dahl, Visit to Hyde Park—RDMSC RD 15/5/94/3.
70. Dahl, Visit to Hyde Park—RDMSC RD 15/5/94/9.
71. Roald Dahl, Letter to Charles Marsh, undated, 08/43—CMP.
72. Charles Marsh, Letter to Roald Dahl, 08/17/43—CMP.
73. William Teeling, Letter to Roald Dahl, 08/10/43—RDMSC RD 15/5/83/1.
74. Charles Marsh Papers at Lyndon B. Johnson Library, University of Texas, Austin, cited in Conant, The Irregulars, pp. 179–80.
75. Dahl’s own comment, scribbled at the foot of a letter to him from J. B. Hogan, 07/14/43—RDMSC RD 15/5/91.
76. J. B. Hogan, Letter to Roald Dahl, 07/14/43—RDMSC RD 15/5/91.
77. Roald Dahl, Transcript of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary on William Stephenson, cited in Conant, The Irregulars, p. 180.
78. Roald Dahl, Letter to Anthony Cave Brown, 10/04/85—RDMSC RD 16/1/2.
79. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 10/19/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/35.
80. J. B. Hogan, Letter to Roald Dahl, 12/07/42—RDMSC RD 15/5.
81. J. B. Hogan, Letter to Roald Dahl, 12/43—RDMSC RD 15/5/68.
82. Roald Dahl, Letter to J. B. Hogan, 01/29/44—RDMSC RD 15/5/59.
83. Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio, 10/27/79.
84. Roald Dahl, Letter to Roger Burlingame, 04/28/45—RDMSC RD 1/1/1/200.
85. Macdonald, The True Intrepid, p. 238.
86. W. Roxburgh, Letter to Albert L. Cox, 05/12/44—RDMSC RD 15/5/40.
87. Roald Dahl, Letter to Anthony Cave Brown, 10/04/85—RDMSC 16/1/2.
88. Roald Dahl, Draft of a speech, undated—RDMSC RD 6/1/1/5.
89. Roald Dahl, Notes on Dinner with Max Beaverbrook, William Stephenson, Michael Henderson—Montego Bay, c. 1947, from Ideas Book No. 1—RDMSC RD 11/1, p. 30.
90. Peter Masefield, Office of Lord Privy Seal, Letter to Roald Dahl, 08/19/44—RDMSC RD 15/5/45.
91. Conant, The Irregulars, p. 177.
92. Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid, pp. 17, 169.
93. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 07/22/44—RDMSC RD 14/5/3/14.
94. Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid, p. 17.
95. Roald Dahl, Interview with Bill Macdonald, quoted in The True Intrepid, p. 239.
96. William Stephenson, Point of Departure, A Foreword by Intrepid in Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid, p. xi.
97. Hugh Trevor-Roper, “Superagent,” Review of Stevenson’s A Man Called Intrepid in The New York Review of Books, May 13, 1976.
98. Dahl told Bill Macdonald that while he thought Stephenson’s contributions to the war effort were outstanding, he also felt that “in his later life, the ex-spy chief was trying to get attention”—Macdonald, The True Intrepid, p. 238.
99. Ibid., p. 246.
100. Antoinette Haskell, Conversation with the author, 01/14/98.
101. Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid, p. 170.
102. Macdonald, The True Intrepid, p. 241.
103. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 12/08/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/39.
104. Nigel West, ed., British Security Co-ordination (London: St. Ermin’s Press, 1998), p. xi.
105. Roald Dahl to Davis Haines, cited in Kopper, Anonymous Giver, p. 79.
106. Roald Dahl, Letter to Anthony Cave Brown, 10/04/85 RDMSC RD 16/1/2.
107. Roald Dahl, Letter to Bill Macdonald, 08/03/90, cited in The T
rue Intrepid, p. 250.
108. Diaries of Henry Agard Wallace, 06/16/43, University of Iowa, Special Collections, Iowa City, Iowa
109. Beatrice Gould, Letter to Roald Dahl, 01/06/44—RDMSC RD 1/1/1/87.
110. Antoinette Haskell, Conversation with the author, 01/14/98.
111. Creekmore Fath cited in Treglown, p. 59.
112. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 01/13/44—RDMSC RD 14/5/3/1.
113. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 11/03/44—RDMSC RD 14/5/3/6.
114. Ibid.
115. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 03/29/44—RDMSC RD 14/5/3/8.
116. Diaries of Henry Agard Wallace, 1935–46, University of Iowa, Special Collections, Iowa City, Iowa.
117. Ibid.
118. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 02/21/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/5.
119. Diaries of Henry Agard Wallace, 1935–46, University of Iowa, Special Collections, Iowa City, Iowa.
120. Roald Dahl, Letter to Charles Marsh, undated, probably early 1948—CMP. Amongst the support Mrs. Reid offered Dahl was $36,000 of free advertising space in her newspapers for The Gremlins and an introduction to one of his heroes, Paul Robeson, whose records Dahl had collected since childhood.
121. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 07/09/42—RDMSC RD 14/5/1/8.
122. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 02/21/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/5.
123. Treglown, p. 60.
124. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 03/31/43—RDMSC RD 14/5/2/10.
125. Cited in Treglown, p. 59.
126. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 04/18/44—RDMSC RD 14/5/3/10.
127. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 08/25/44—RDMSC RD 14/5/3/19.
128. Antoinette Haskell, Conversation with the author, 01/14/98; also Letter from Charles Marsh to Roald Dahl, 12/22/46—RDMSC RD 16/1/1. From evidence gathered by Cherie Burns for her forthcoming biography of Millicent Rogers (St. Martin’s Press, 2011), it seems that the heiress may have suffered from scoliosis or curvature of the spine.
129. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 08/05/44—RDMSC RD 14/5/3/16.
130. Roald Dahl, Love, in Ladies’ Home Journal (May 1949).
131. Treglown, p. 77.
132. Dahl, Letter to his mother, 03/11/44—RDMSC RD 14/5/3/6.
133. Treglown, p. 79.
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