C.S. Lewis Was a Secret Government Agent

  • Thread starter Thread starter CopyBoy
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

CopyBoy

Guest
How Lewis came to be recruited and by whom remains a secret. The records of the Secret Intelligence Service, known popularly as MI6, remain closed. Perhaps one of his former pupils at Oxford recommended him for his mission. It was an unusual mission for which few people were suited. J. R. R. Tolkien had the knowledge base for the job, even beyond that of Lewis, but Tolkien lacked other skills that Lewis possessed.
Perhaps someone had heard Lewis lecture on his favorite subject in one of the two great lecture halls in the Examination Schools building of Oxford University. At a time when Oxford fellows were notorious for the poor quality of their public lectures, Lewis packed the hall with an audience of students who were not required to attend lectures. In the 1930s, Lewis was the best show in town.
Somehow Lewis had developed the skill to speak to an audience and hold them in rapt attention, in spite of his academic training rather than because of it.
Click to expand...
christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/december-web-only/cs-lewis-secret-agent.html
 
Are you referring to C. S. Lewis or C. K Lewis-people tend to get y hem confused.
 
Elizium23 said:
I have never heard of C. K. Lewis. Who was he, and why would I confuse him with the great Inkling?
Click to expand...
Probably thinking of C. Day-Lewis. C. S. lost a position as Professor of Poetry at Oxford to him, in 1951. Folks can confuse lots of people with other people.
 
Lewis made various radio broadcasts to support the British war effort. It was hardly a secret.
 
PaulfromIowa said:
Lewis made various radio broadcasts to support the British war effort. It was hardly a secret.
Click to expand...
This is a different subject.

Lewis’ wartime broadcasts became the basis for the three small books that later became MERE CHRISTIANITY.
 
Bookmarked! 🙂 Thanks, CopyBoy, that was a fantastic article.

I just wish I could listen to what there is of the actual recording…😦
 
Making a propaganda broadcast hardly qualifies as being a “secret government agent”, I think. Plenty of intellectuals got involved in propaganda, employing various gradations of the black arts, and for more than one arm of the considerable British intelligence world of WWII. And I’m pretty sure (need to look this up when my books are at my disposal again) that the JBC was not part of MI6 but, as it’s name suggests (although names could be deliberately deceptive too), a joint committee made up of MI6, BBC and other representatives.
 
Picky_Picky said:
Making a propaganda broadcast hardly qualifies as being a “secret government agent”, I think. Plenty of intellectuals got involved in propaganda, employing various gradations of the black arts, and for more than one arm of the considerable British intelligence world of WWII. And I’m pretty sure (need to look this up when my books are at my disposal again) that the JBC was not part of MI6 but, as it’s name suggests (although names could be deliberately deceptive too), a joint committee made up of MI6, BBC and other representatives.
Click to expand...
The JBC isn’t referenced in the most detailed MI6 title I can lay my hands on (Jeffery’s SECRET HISTORY OF MI6), but net sleuthing suggests you are on the right track. The JBC was a function (officially) of the Ministry of Information, and had interlacings with both MI5 and MI6. Its first director had formal connections with both MI5/MI6.

Chesterton was apart of an analogous effort in WWI, before his health broke.
 
GKC said:
The JBC isn’t referenced in the most detailed MI6 title I can lay my hands on (Jeffery’s SECRET HISTORY OF MI6), but net sleuthing suggests you are on the right track. The JBC was a function (officially) of the Ministry of Information, and had interlacings with both MI5 and MI6. Its first director had formal connections with both MI5/MI6.

Chesterton was apart of an analogous effort in WWI, before his health broke.
Click to expand...
Yep, if the director you’re thinking of is Hilda Matheson, she was an interesting person.

However, here are some lines from Ioannis Stefanidis “Substitute for Power":
During the war, the BBC had to put up with the demands of other agencies dabbling in propaganda abroad. An early ‘claimant’ was the Joint Broadcasting Committee (JBC), a façade organisation subsidised by the MoI and Section D (later SO2). it sought to project Britain through recorded programmes and scripts for use by foreign stations. Their propaganda content was supposedly found in ‘introductory talks given to each item’ – mostly music. By late 1940, the whole project was judged ‘costly and not very effective’. Although the decision was taken in December 1940, it was not until July 1941 that JBC was transferred to the BBC and formed the nucleus of its Transcription Service.
Click to expand...
Section D was of course part of MI6 and eventually evolved into the Special Operations Executive. It was also for a time the home of both Guy Burgess and Kim Philby, whose special operations were of a different nature.
 
Picky_Picky said:
Yep, if the director you’re thinking of is Hilda Matheson, she was an interesting person.

However, here are some lines from Ioannis Stefanidis “Substitute for Power":

Section D was of course part of MI6 and eventually evolved into the Special Operations Executive. It was also for a time the home of both Guy Burgess and Kim Philby, whose special operations were of a different nature.
Click to expand...
Oooh. Neat info. Wonder if, in all the stuff I got on sneaky doings, I got anything more on that.

Yep. Ms. Matheson, friend of Vita Sackville-West.
 
GKC said:
Oooh. Neat info. Wonder if, in all the stuff I got on sneaky doings, I got anything more on that.

Yep. Ms. Matheson, friend of Vita Sackville-West.
Click to expand...
I suspect Asa Briggs’s History of Broadcasting in the UK is the key publication, but I don’t have it. And it’s multivolumed. Lord Briggs was, of course, at Bletchley.

By the way, what was JRRT doing during the war? He would seem ideal for Bletchley, so if he wasn’t there, where was he?
 
Picky_Picky said:
I suspect Asa Briggs’s History of Broadcasting in the UK is the key publication, but I don’t have it. And it’s multivolumed. Lord Briggs was, of course, at Bletchley.

By the way, what was JRRT doing during the war? He would seem ideal for Bletchley, so if he wasn’t there, where was he?
Click to expand...
No where in particular. But see the link I gave above.

telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6197169/JRR-Tolkien-trained-as-British-spy.html

He was picked as a possible Bletchley candidate, along the lines of the manning of Room 40 in WWI, with typical British academics, linguistics and chess players. But he declined. He did serve as an air raid warden, as did Lewis.

Somewhere I have a single volume story of the BBC in WWII, but somewhere is not known.
 
GKC said:
No where in particular. But see the link I gave above.

telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6197169/JRR-Tolkien-trained-as-British-spy.html

He was picked as a possible Bletchley candidate, along the lines of the manning of Room 40 in WWI, with typical British academics, linguistics and chess players. But he declined. He did serve as an air raid warden, as did Lewis.

Somewhere I have a single volume story of the BBC in WWII, but somewhere is not known.
Click to expand...
Yes, it was the Telegraph piece that started my train of thought. It’s half a lifetime since I read the Carpenter biography, and being idle I turned to Wikipedia, where it alleges not that he declined the offer, but that he was rejected. Either way seemed odd to me: it would seem out of character for him to have turned down a request to help the war effort; on the other hand I’d have thought he had the sort of mind Bletchley would have found useful –although I suppose it is just about possible that the blokes at Bletchley knew more than me about the required traits 🙂

Then I noticed he had changed both college and Chair in 1945, and of course civilian career changes in 1945 are sometimes cover for the end of a period of clandestine skulduggery. I wondered if the reason he didn’t go to Bletchley was that there was need of his services elsewhere.

Or perhaps it’s just that once one starts looking for spooks one finds oneself seeing them everywhere …
 
Picky_Picky said:
Yes, it was the Telegraph piece that started my train of thought. It’s half a lifetime since I read the Carpenter biography, and being idle I turned to Wikipedia, where it alleges not that he declined the offer, but that he was rejected. Either way seemed odd to me: it would seem out of character for him to have turned down a request to help the war effort; on the other hand I’d have thought he had the sort of mind Bletchley would have found useful –although I suppose it is just about possible that the blokes at Bletchley knew more than me about the required traits 🙂

Then I noticed he had changed both college and Chair in 1945, and of course civilian career changes in 1945 are sometimes cover for the end of a period of clandestine skulduggery. I wondered if the reason he didn’t go to Bletchley was that there was need of his services elsewhere.

Or perhaps it’s just that once one starts looking for spooks one finds oneself seeing them everywhere …
Click to expand...
I had glanced over the Carpenter and the Pearce bios, before replying. Not finding much relevant to the issue. I am of the opinion that he did nothing of which we do not know.

As an aside, one might consider the varying and shifting expressions he had made on the War itself, and how they might be interpreted. No idea if that reveals anything or not.

valarguild.org/varda/Tolkien/encyc/articles/t/Tolkien/TolkienandWW2.htm

Link me, if you can, to the source that says he didn’t make the cut. I would learn more.
 
GKC said:
I had glanced over the Carpenter and the Pearce bios, before replying. Not finding much relevant to the issue. I am of the opinion that he did nothing of which we do not know.

As an aside, one might consider the varying and shifting expressions he had made on the War itself, and how they might be interpreted. No idea if that reveals anything or not.

valarguild.org/varda/Tolkien/encyc/articles/t/Tolkien/TolkienandWW2.htm

Link me, if you can, to the source that says he didn’t make the cut. I would learn more.
Click to expand...
The Wiki entry is referenced to a footnote in Carpenter’s edition of T’s letters (letter 35, in which he mentions what we believe to be his forthcoming interview at Bletchley). I can’t find that letter plus that footnote on line, which is weird, but here is an alleged reference to the wording of the footnote:

periannath.com/news/tolkiens-career-in-espionage-greatly-exaggerated/
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top