The DIARY
The cinema spy, the star’s infamy, the sordid history and the biblical story ... they should make a film about it
Double Deutsch
NINETY years ago this month the first cinema in the Odeon chain was opened in Brierley Hill in the Midlands, although it was originally called the Picture House. It was built by Oscar Deutsch, then 33, whose parents were Jewish immigrants. Less than five years later, in 1933, there were 26 Odeons and the name had become a household word, interchangeable with cinema. By 1937, there were 250 in the chain, almost all of them purpose-built and featuring art deco architecture and artefacts. The name, Odeon, was an acronym for Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation. The young cinema mogul died tragically young, aged just 48, of stomach cancer in 1941 (his wife later selling out to the Rank Organisation) but it was his unwitting role in helping to create the most infamous spy ring in British history that has gone untold until now. In 1934, Oscar sponsored his cousin Arnold, then living in Austria, to allow him to come to London. Arnold was a brilliant psychologist who had also studied philosophy and chemistry and who ran birth control clinics in Vienna. He was to do postgraduate work at the University of London, but this was a cover for his real work, spying for Russia, then the USSR. He was a highly-trained agent of the NKVD (haven’t times changed!), as was his wife Josefine, who was the radio operator of the team. It was Arnold who enlisted the infamous Cambridge Five, starting with Kim Philby, followed by Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess and then John Cairncross. In all, and according to later KGB records, Deutsch was to enlist and handle 20 agents in Britain.
The Cambridge Five believed the Soviet Union was a bulwark against Nazism and fascism. They are credited, if that’s the right word, for passing on details of the Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb, to Moscow, as well as countless other secrets.
In 1937, Josef Stalin, believing Soviet agents abroad might be supporters of his rival Leon Trotsky, ordered Deutsch and other spies back to Moscow. Arnold wasn’t immediately executed but he was to die, the circumstances of which have never been properly established, although it seems clear he was purged along with the millions of others. It’s a tale that would make a cracking film for the present-day Odeon.
Saul good
I am indebted to the author
Lou Berney for broadening my hermeneutical knowledge by centring the plot of his brilliant knockabout thriller Gutshot Straight around Samuel 18:25. “Then Saul said: ‘Thus shall you say to David the king desires no brideprice except a hundred foreskins of Philistines, that he may be avenged of the king’s enemies’.” These alleged artefacts are the plunder the combatants in Berney’s book are after in a rollicking and multiply duplicitous chase which largely takes place in Panama. There’s skin in the game, you could say.
Infamy, infamy ...
IN what was a distasteful publicity stunt – some might also see it as an insult to abused women, Catholics and black people – and which spectacularly backfired, Paul Gascoigne was to be inducted into the Scottish Football Hall of Fame next Sunday at a black-tie dinner. Gazza is, of course, a charter member of the infamy lodge. To list all of his periods in rehab, the catalogue of racial and religious insults, his historical criminal convictions – including assaulting his ex-wife Sheryl while a Rangers player – would take more space and more inclination than I can spare. As recently as August, Gascoigne was arrested at Durham railway station for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman on the train from York, although he wasn’t charged.
The Hall of Fame is organised by the Scottish Football Museum, not the SFA, and after nominations from the public an “expert panel from across the Scottish sport media” selects the inductees. I understand there were nine men and one woman on the voting panel (I have the names) and that the discussion was extremely lively.
What should be a real honour is really all about garnering publicity getting punters through the door of the museum, which turned over £500,000 last year. Several SFA officials had threatened to boycott the event, while the country’s governing body has been at pains to say it had nothing to do with the process of choosing who gets in. I’m sure I’m not the only one with doubts about that. The museum is a
charitable company that is 75 per cent-owned by the SFA. In the end, the Hampden blazers, faced with opprobrium and likely protest, pulled the plug. Which is good news for the woman who is being inducted on Sunday, Julie Fleeting, and who, among her garlands of honours, scored 116 goals for Scotland in 121 games. At least she now doesn’t need a bodyguard.
History lesson
THE actress Tilda Swinton’s father died earlier this month with her at his bedside. He was a former Scots Guards officer known as MajorGeneral Sir John Swinton. He lost a leg in the last days of the Second World War, had a wooden one fitted, and later in life his eight-year-old son Willie fired a .22 bullet through it on a duck shoot. Just why a child was allowed to handle a gun you can make up your mind about.
The one-legged soldier was given more of a eulogy than an obituary in The Times last week, concentrating on his military career, but airbrushing some of the more brutal facts.
Swinton was second in command of the 2nd Scots Guards Brigade when it was sent to Malaya in 1948 to put down an insurrection against British colonial rule. Malayan guerrillas had been armed by Britain to fight against the Japanese in the Second World War, but Swinton and his soldiers were now tasked with putting down the independence movement.
In December 1948, the 7th Platoon of G Company surrounded a rubber plantation near Batang Kali in Selangor and the civilians were rounded up, the men and women separated. A total of 24 unarmed men were then massacred by automatic weapons before the villagers’ homes were set on fire.
Since then, relatives have been lobbying for justice, calling for a full inquiry into the massacre, which was initially covered up and has been repeatedly resisted by UK governments since. In 2012, the High Court upheld a Government decision not to hold a public inquiry, also ruling there was evidence the killings were a deliberate execution.
In 2015, after an appeal, the Supreme Court again ruled the Government was not obliged to hold a hearing – even although it may have been a war crime – because it happened so long ago. This month the European Court of Human Rights concurred the appeal was inadmissible, essentially on the same grounds, bringing the last legal avenue to an end.
There is no suggestion Swinton condoned the actions of his soldiers, but he was a crucial part of the 70-year failure to atone.