I was surprised to find that so many government officials in Britain in the second world war had so much time to spend on matters of little importance. There was much back and forth over the whether or not letting in Spanish journalists (at a time when the dictator Franco ruled Spain with a somewhat Nazi-like ideology) visit Britain would be allowing spies into Britain or if it was worth it to improve relations and keep Spain from becoming a full military ally of Germany. I don't think thes

I was surprised to find that so many government officials in Britain in the second world war had so much time to spend on matters of little importance. There was much back and forth over the whether or not letting in Spanish journalists (at a time when the dictator Franco ruled Spain with a somewhat Nazi-like ideology) visit Britain would be allowing spies into Britain or if it was worth it to improve relations and keep Spain from becoming a full military ally of Germany. I don't think these journalists were in any position to collect much information even if they had been German spies.
The book focuses on the author's father, Thomas Burns, an English Catholic who ran the press section of the British embassy. He also gathered a fair amount of political information, due to his connections as a pre-war Catholic publisher and English supporter of the Franco forces in the Spanish Civil War. Burns also married into the influential Maranon family in 1944. I don't think the information collected was of comparable quality to what the British collected by intercepting and decoding German military radio messages, though of course any information collected about Spain, a non-belligerant, would have been as important as that collected about the Germans.

The book is written in an interesting fashion, and much of the details of Burns personal life is interesting. Burn knew, and published, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Grenne.