Justin Pollard's Blog: Secret Britain, page 2

The Dreadnought Deception

[image error] For Admiral Sir William May, the events of 7 February 1910 proved highly inconvenient, even awkward. As he was in charge of the home fleet of the greatest naval power on earth, it was his duty not only to protect Britain, but also to help the Foreign Office with its diplomatic work. And it was this latter role that was annoying him. A telegram had arrived from the Foreign Office that morning, informing him of the visit of 'Prince Makalen of Abyssinia and his suite', who wished to inspect his ...

Fitton's Finest Hour

[image error] Michael Fitton managed to start a war thanks to a single eagle-eyed exploit in uncovering a damning secret one morning in September 1780.

Fitton had entered the Royal Navy in June of that year as servant to a family friend, George Keppel, then captain of the 28-gun frigate Vestal. With the American Revolutionary War raging, the vessel was sent to intercept American shipping and so fell in, on Sunday 3 September, with the US privateer and packet Phoenix and its convoy off the Newfoundland bank...

A Girl Called Tommy

[image error] Dorothy Lawrence was eighteen when the First World War broke out and was living in Paris looking for work as a newspaper journalist. In the early days of the war it was almost impossible for newspapers to get accurate information from the front lines as all civilians were barred from the area, so when Dorothy wrote to editors, suggesting that she might become a war reporter for them, the universal response was ridicule. If they couldn't get male reporters to the front, what hope did a mere wo...

Agent Pickle Cleans Up

[image error] On 30 April 1746 two ships, the Mars and the Bellona, dropped anchor at Loch nan Uamh, Arisaig, in the Scottish Highlands. From the hold they unloaded seven casks of gold coins, once intended to fund Bonnie Prince Charlie's attempt to regain the English and Scottish thrones. Now, two weeks after the prince's comprehensive defeat at Culloden, the money was to be used instead to spirit the remaining Jacobites (and the prince himself) out of the country.

Things got off to a bad start when one of ...

Hide-and-Seek

[image error] The surrender of Oxford to the Parliamentarians in 1646, during the English Civil War, marked more than the loss of a city to the Royalists. They also lost a member of the royal family – but not for long. Prince James, second son of Charles I and still only twelve years old, became Cromwell's prisoner. As a result his household was dismissed and he was sent to London to be placed under house arrest at St James's Palace. Here he, along with his sister Princess Elizabeth and his younger brother...

The Spirit of Ecstasy

[image error] The Spirit of Ecstasy, that little silver statuette that stands on top of the radiator of every Rolls-Royce, has is perhaps the most famous image in motoring, but it is also the keeper of a tragic secret.

When Charles Stewart Rolls and Henry Royce first went into business, there was no standard mascot on the bonnets of their cars. The craze had only recently started of putting small objects there, anything from horses to bulldogs: the choice was very much up to the owner. Indeed, it was one of...

The Baccarat Scandal

[image error] Sir William Gordon-Cumming was a man of his era – a late nineteenth-century playboy with royal connections and a love of gambling and womanising. He had stalked tigers in India, fought the Mahdi in the Sudan and been shipwrecked off southern Africa. He also had a habit of swearing loudly although, thankfully for the delicate ears of his aristocratic friends, this was usually in Hindustani.

In England he became firm favourite with the 'in' set, including Albert, Prince of Wales, later Edward VI...

Murder at Bisham Abbey

[image error] Bisham Abbey in Berkshire is best known today as one of the five national Sports Centres where athletes and sportsmen and women, including the English football squad, prepare for important competitions. It is also home to a dark and tragic secret.

Bisham Abbey had originally been a priory of Augustinian canons before falling prey to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, only to be refounded as a Benedictine abbey by the ever-fickle Henry VIII who, momentarily, had second thoughts. This instituti...

The Mystery Towers

[image error] In June 1918 a detachment of Royal Engineers, all sworn to the utmost secrecy, arrived at Southward Green in Sussex and started building a camp to house the staff for a mysterious project. Not long after, the locals of Shoreham became aware that a huge construction project lay on their doorstep as two gargantuan concrete and steel towers began to rise from the harbourside, laboured on by over 3,000 men, mainly at night.

It being wartime, the nature of the towers was of course secret but their...

The Ferguson Gang

[image error] From the late 1920s until 1940 a notorious gang operated in England whose members, although all now dead, have, with one exception, managed to retain their anonymity. Their exploits were legendary and their every adventure was written up with gusto in their own minute book, known as 'the Boo'. The gang member known as 'Red Biddy' recorded one such exploit there:

<ex>I goes up to the door and says to the man at the door – Ear's my card – please give it to the Secretary of the National Trust – W...