Conspirator: The Untold Story of Tyler Kent

by Ray Bearse

On 20 May 1940, as Hitler's tanks reached the French coast, Churchill sent a secret message to Roosevelt, begging for US help. On the same day, MI5 forced its way into the London flat of Tyler Kent, a code clerk at the US embassy. They found 1929 stolen messages, including that morning's desperate plea. Kent's trial and arrest for espionage was unprecedented in the period. But was he really a spy? And if so, for whom? Using documents and reports never previously published, the authors piece together the story of Tyler Kent's treachery. Anthony Read is co-author of "Kristallnacht" which won the Wingate Literary Award.

Genres: Biography

332 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1991

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conspirator starts out as a fairly clinical description of the facts of a spy case that occurred during the early years of Britain's involvement in World War II. The tone is appropriate for the text's core subject - Tyler Kent, a man of extreme anti-semitic views who strangely enough was also utterly cold in his approach to stealing secret documents from the U.S. Embassy. He remains something of an enigma at the end of the book, but this is a story worth telling.

It links closely with the efforts of Winston Churchill to save his nation by dragging the United States into the war and with Franklin D. Roosevelt's equal intent to protect his nation from involvement in war at a time when isolationists predominated in the popular press and many levels of government. These characters give Conspirator its frisson as well as that of the ambitious but possibly incompetent US Ambassador to the Court of St James, Joseph Kennedy.

The clinical nature of the text made the first half a difficult struggle but in the end it was a worthy effort due to the intersection of these major historical players and the strange blank canvas of Tyler Kent a man who in the end must be regarded as a loser and little else.

[Benjamin Wetmore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Competent. Decent research. The tone and theory about the subject changes often. Was he just a loon? Was he a peacemaker? Was he unjustly prosecuted? The book gives a varying array of answers, none satisfactory. It also feels rushed toward the end. It dismisses in a blithe sentence or two Kents complaint about not having his detention period tolled against his sentence as time served. This isn’t a minor issue and its just brushed aside without even that much context or explanation. The first third to half of the book doesn’t come across this way.