KGB contract on The Duke
QUESTION Did the KGB attempt to assassinate actor John Wayne?
THE idea that Joseph Stalin ordered the KGB to assassinate a Hollywood star sounds bizarre, but there are multiple reports and accounts from both sides of the Cold War that confirm the murder plot did exist.
John Wayne, nicknamed ‘The Duke’, wasn’t just the quintessential image of the American cowboy on screen, but he was outspoken about his hatred of Communism. He had been warned to tone down his rhetoric, but went on record with the response: ‘No goddamn Commie’s gonna frighten me.’
According to the book, John Wayne: The Man Behind The Myth, by Michael Munn, Soviet film-maker Sergei Gerasimov discovered the KGB plot and told Wayne about it in 1949.
The first assassination attempt involved two Russian hitmen posing as FBI agents who tried to visit Wayne at his office in Hollywood. Real FBI agents intercepted the would-be killers.
It’s rumoured Wayne and his scriptwriter, Jimmy Grant, had hatched a plot of their own to abduct any hit squad, drive them to a beach and stage a mock execution. Though no one can confirm if this ever happened, failing their mission was enough to frighten the first would-be assassins because, rather than return to Russia and report to Stalin, they worked for the FBI.
In his book, Munn said another group of Communists, based in Burbank, California, had plotted to kill Wayne in 1955. However, a group of stunt performers raided their premises and ‘ran them out of town’. The book also alleges Communist agents had tried to take Wayne out on the set of 1953’s Western film Hondo in Mexico.
Stalin died in 1953 and his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, met privately with John Wayne in 1958 to inform him that the kill order had been rescinded.
Wayne told his friends that Khrushchev referred to Stalin’s ‘mad years’ and apologised for the dictator’s behaviour. Emilie Lamplough,
Wiltshire.
QUESTION How many building societies did Ireland once have?
IRELAND once had close to 50 building societies, all locally owned. They were the traditional source of mortgages and the decisions on those mortgages were made by local people who knew their savers and borrowers intimately.
Building societies started to be founded in Ireland in the later 19th century; one of the first was the Working Men’s Benefit Building Society, founded in south Dublin in 1861. In 1960, some 99 years after it had been founded, it changed its name to the First National Building Society.
Subsequently, it bought over half a dozen other building societies, some with very specific local links, such as the Guinness Building Society, which provided mortgages for Guinness workers. It was taken over in 1984.
Eventually, First National went public as First Active and in 2004, it was absorbed by the Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns Ulster Bank. Five years later, in 2009, the operations of First Active were merged with the operations of Ulster Bank and what had once been an independent building society ceased to exist.
The Irish Industrial Benefit Building Society was also founded in Dublin, in 1873, some 12 years after the Working Men’s Benefit Building Society.
For many years, the Irish Industrial Benefit Building Society remained a small institution, based at Camden Street in south Dublin, but in 1975, it changed its name to Irish Nationwide.
In subsequent years, Irish Nationwide became a huge operation but eventually, it got into big financial trouble. In 2010, it required a €5.4billion loan from the Government just to keep going, but the following year, it was sold off to Anglo-Irish Bank.
When building societies were small, everyone involved knew everyone else, including the staff and the savers and in these tightly knit financial communities, if people had the savings and the connections, it was relatively easy to get a mortgage.
The last building society to close was the ICS, which had been started in the 19th century to provide mortgages for civil servants. Its first president was William Dargan, the pioneering railway engineer. But in 2014, it ceased trading when it was absorbed by the Bank of Ireland.
With the closure of the ICS, the whole building society movement came to an end and with it, the means for many families to get mortgages comparatively easily and locally, also came to an end. The demise of building societies has undoubtedly been one of the contributory factors to the present housing crisis in Ireland.
Anne McKenna, Boyle, Co. Roscommon.
QUESTION Why is JG Farrell’s novel Troubles known as the Lost Man Booker winner?
THE Lost Man Booker was a 2010 event that corrected a glitch in the prize. Initially awarded retrospectively, the Booker became a prize for best novel in the year of publication in 1971, thus leaving 1970 Bookerless — but not bereft of novels worth the attention. The idea for a lost prize came to Peter Straus, literary agent and honorary archivist to the Booker Prize Foundation.
The organisers appointed a panel of three judges – born in or around 1970 – to select a shortlist of six novels. The panel consisted of the journalist and critic Rachel Cooke, newsreader Katie Derham and novelist Tobias Hill.
The six books that went to a public vote were: The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark; The Birds On The Trees by Nina Bawden; Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault; The Bay Of Noon by Shirley Hazzard; Troubles by JG Farrell; and The Vivisector by Patrick White.
Authors who missed out included Iris Murdoch, David Lodge, Joe Orton, Melvyn Bragg, H.E. Bates, Ruth Rendell, Nina Bawden, Brian Aldiss and Susan Hill.
The Vivisector by Patrick White was hotly tipped to win, but it was JG Farrell’s Troubles – a portrayal of the fast-decaying Majestic Hotel in 1919 and Britain’s even more rapidly crumbling rule in Ireland – that took the prize.
Farrell had died in 1979, so his brother, Richard, accepted a first edition copy of the book on the author’s behalf.
Farrell also won the 1973 prize for The Siege Of Krishnapur. Had Troubles won in 1970, he would have become the first author to win the Booker twice. Mrs Janine Winterton, Hertfordshire.