Helen Fry
Helen Fry in conversation with Barnaby Jameson on his spy book ‘Codename: Madeleine’

Helen Fry - In conversation with Barnaby Jameson on his spy book ‘Codename Madeleine’

- Thank you. Yes, we’ve still got a few people coming in, but that’s fine. We’ll make a start. Tonight, I’m really delighted that Barnaby Jameson has joined us. He’s a barrister, an expert on terrorism, but he’s actually broken into the world of fiction, and he’s written his debut bestselling novel, “Codename: Madeleine.” This is inspired by true events of Second World War, and I think we’re in for some really nice surprises this evening. So be wonderful, the format is for Barnaby actually to share for about 40 minutes a kind of a talk and his thought through the writing and the material, which I know ‘cause I’ve seen the PowerPoint earlier, is absolutely fascinating. And then I’m going to ask him a few questions and then before we finish, we’ll have 10 to 15 minutes of your questions. So please do put your questions in the chat box as we go along and I’ll be monitoring them. But now, over to Barnaby. Thank you so much. We are absolutely delighted to have you on lockdown. It’s a huge privilege to have you. Thank you, Barnaby.

• Thank you, Helen. It’s a huge privilege to be here and so to everybody attending a very good evening from a rather dark and wet London. And thank you very much for joining me for this talk on my debut novel, “Codename: Madeleine.” It’s an honour to be asked by Dr. Fry, who is a world-class historian, writer, and indeed, a world-class human being. And it’s also an honour to address each attender wherever in the world you are. And as Helen has said, we’re going to have a short PowerPoint presentation from me and then some questions from Dr. Fry. And then I hope some questions from you. And so perhaps we can start with a little family history because our story begins with an envelope. It was an envelope that I found in a draw in a writing desk in my grandmother’s cottage near Cambridge when I was seven or eight years old. And it contained a cache of sepia photographs from World War II. And one of the photographs showed a slim English officer in an open shirt, long shorts and long socks riding in what looked like a far away African empire. It was, as I discovered, both. I was looking at a photograph of my maternal grandfather, Jeffrey Curran, riding in the highlands of the ancient and noble empire of Ethiopia in 1941. That photograph has sadly been lost, but here is a photograph of my grandfather in 1945 with my mother Patricia then, as you can see, very small. My grandfather survived the war and made little fuss about the fact that he was a decorated airman and an intelligence officer who was part of an elite unit sent to Ethiopia to help the Ethiopians wrestle their country back from Mussolini who had invaded before the war back in 1935.

My grandfather was attached to a British Ethiopian special forces group called Gideon Force, who were tasked amongst other matters, with recapturing the capital, Addis Ababa. And just as an aside, Ethiopia was considered highly strategic because it was so close to the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. And it was a difficult and dangerous mission. Addis, the capital, was full of snipers and the Italian forces booby trapped many of the buildings. But the capitol was retaken, emperor Haile Selassie famously returning on a white horse in 1941. Now there you can see some of the Gideon force fighters in 1941. And then if we move on the central picture there is Haile Selassie, the emperor, returning in May, 1941, having been restored to the throne with the help of British and Ethiopian forces. You can then see him at a later stage in his life with his pet cheetah. And if you look closely, I think on other photographs, you can see that they had rubies on their collars. So he had quite an exotic court, it had to be said. And Haile Selassie was known as the King of kings, and as such, he had a suitably imperial seal. Here, you see it’s the seal of the lion of Judah, a potent Christian and Jewish symbol, which is mentioned in Genesis. I pieced together my grandfather’s war sometime after he died. He served in Ethiopia, then in Aden, now Yemen, and in Europe ending the war training and leading Polish pilots who flew with the Royal Air Force. He was what is known as a special duties officer, which is a euphemism for intelligence and espionage. From Ethiopia and Aden, he was relaying intelligence back to the special operations executive or SOE. A secret espionage and sabotage unit operating across Europe, including Transylvania. And as far afield as Ethiopia. Special Operations Executive, which are called SOE going forward, was set up in a desperate role of the dais in 1940. It was known colloquially as the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare, which was ironic since so many SOE agents were in fact, women. And two things, before we leave Ethiopia, let just go back.

Before we leave Ethiopia, I can say this, that my grandfather was befriended by Haile Selassie. And after the war when the emperor was staying in England in the late 1940s, he made a special trip to officiate at the opening of my grandfather’s pottery outside Cambridge. And my mother thought it was completely normal for her father’s wartime friend to appear wearing an imperial cloak crossed with a ruby, and arrive in a Bentley flying the standard of the lion of Judah. Scroll forward to 2010, myself and my then partner Natasha, were lucky enough to adopt a baby boy from Ethiopia. His name is Firo, and he’s allowed me to tell his story. Pharaoh found us in Addis Ababa where my grandfather had fought with the Ethiopians back in 1941. And Firo’s lived in London since he was a baby. Here he is a few years back. And the slide to the right where you see both of us wearing wigs. In case anyone’s wondering, that was a picture taken with our glad rags on when I was appointed Queen’s counsel back in 2018. That title now reverting to King’s Counsel on the Death of the Sovereign. And my son is now 13 and a budding film actor. Let’s go on to the subject matter of the book and we’ll come to… Well, before I do that, there is another example of an SOE agent in this case, somebody called Rosanna Banti from Italy, who was a phenomenal skier, rider, and a phenomenal shot. But as we’ll hear, she was not exceptional by the stands of the women of SOE. And in terms of the subject matter of the book, I can say that I come from a family of writers. And as a starving pupil barrister, I used to do book reviews for Anne Wilson at the London Evening Standard.

And when I was called to the bar, I joined the Inn of Court, the Middle Temple, which is an inn with a strong literary tradition. Previous members have included Thackeray of “Vanity Fair,” Fame Dickens and John Buchan, he of “The Thirty-Nine Steps.” And I’d always wondered what would happen if I dared throw my hat into the ring as a novelist? When I started piecing together my grandfather’s war, I started looking in some detail at SOE. And as a writer, you are always looking for something interesting, interesting characters. And as I lifted the lid on SOE headquarters in Baker Street, there, they all were. From all walks of life, actors, barristers like me, writers, musicians, housewives, skiers, racing drivers, safe breakers, burglars, forges, and at least one stage illusionist. And it sounds a little like the composition of my own chambers. And as I’ve said, here’s another example of a SOE recruit mentioned a moment ago, Rosanna Banti. The woman I chose as the protagonist for the first book in the series, was so extraordinary that had she been a figment of my imagination, I suspect people would’ve said she was simply implausible. She was the half Indian daughter of a wondering Sufi mystic, born in Moscow in 1914 and brought up in the Sufi tradition of the path of love. She was educated in Paris where she lived between the wars, studying music and psychology at the Sorbonne. She fled to England in 1939 at the outbreak of war where she enrolled in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, the WAF. From the WAF, she was recruited as a fluent French speaker into SOE.

And she was sent to occupied Paris as a wireless operator in 1943 under the code name of Madeleine. This was one of the most dangerous spirals as wireless signals, those signals put out by wireless operators could be tracked. And so our protagonist swapped her Indian loot and her heart for a mark two radio transmitter, a webley pistol and a concealed cyanide tablet in case she was captured by the Gestapo. The other SOE agents feature in my book. Centred there, you see the barrister, Francis Suttill who was head of one of the largest SOE networks in occupied France. His was known as the Prosper Network, that was his code name and that was based in Paris. Now, his son, Francis Suttill’s son, also called Francis Suttill, is still alive. And we have spoken at length. The last time he saw his father is when he was, I think, three years old. There was also the racing driver, Robert Benoist, to the left as you look at the screen. The winner of the French and Spanish Grand Prix in 1927. And to the right of the screen, there was the poet cryptographer Leo Marks. And as you’ll see in the book, if you get as far as reading it, that SOE agents use keywords from poems to encrypt messages sent in from the field. And some of the poems, including the famous, “The Life That I Have,” were composed by Marks himself. It was Leo Marks who had to decide a week before the deployment of Agent Madeleine whether her coding skills were sufficient. And it was an agonising decision, knowing as he did, the dangers awaiting her on the other side of the channel. One of the central aspects of the book is the relationship between Madeleine and her father, Inayat. But hers was a close relationship, and you’ll see how it develops as the book unfolds.

Inayat was a follower of the Sufi mystic, Rumi. And code named Madeleine is I think, one of the only spy or wartime spy books that is threaded with Sufi wisdom and Proverbs. And here is a very short tribute, if I may, to Inayat, the father of Codename Madeleine. I have to excuse the plug at the end. And so onto the writing of a “Codename: Madeleine.” Many people have asked me as a barrister, particularly a barrister who prosecutes in terrorist cases, how on earth I found the time to write a 500-page historical novel? And the truth I confess, is that I started writing the book when the United Kingdom was still part of the European Union. It was a case of little and often writing whenever I could find the time. And it’s not as I discovered an occupation, that is to say writing that endears you entirely to your immediate family. The other question I’m frequently asked is, have you ever been busted writing your book in court secretly? To which the answer is no comment, or at least only when my highly competent junior nanny was at the controls. But it was during lockdown that I had a clean shot at the book, and lockdown began with a half finished jigsaw of scraps of writing and ended up with the semblance of a book> And “Codename: Madeleine” as Helen has said, is based on real people and real events, but it is written like the TV shows that have been on the BBC recently or Netflix.

That is to say, “The Crown” or “SAS: Rogue Heroes.” It’s written as fiction. Nobody knows exactly how the person in history spoke, but I’ve tried to be loyal to the characters I grew to know well. The book starts off the various character stories separately, and the reader is left to anticipate how all the threads intertwine. Comparisons have been made on a very good day with William Boyd and Sebastian Faulks, the author of “Birdsong,” whose name I think nobody is entirely sure how to pronounce, including me. As a work of historical fiction, the author has to be extremely careful, not just with facts and dates, but with everything. Settings, and those include clothes, cars, drinks. Absinthe, for example, I found out was made illegal in France during the First World War in 1915. So bang went my Absinthe bar scenes from 1920s Paris. Weapons, gadgets, everything. Everything has to be 100% authentic. And in terms of what you get between the two covers, I think it’s fair to say, it’s quite a bit Love, war, music, betrayal, poetry, cryptography, tigers, elephants, U-boats, zeppelins, unarmed combat, chess and cyanide and above all, courage. This is a book about one of the bravest women of World War II. And I’m going to come on now and have just a quick word about the narrator of the audio book. Book is published as a paperback. It’s also published as a Kindle. And there is also the audio book about which I’m particularly proud. The audio book is narrated by the amazing actor, Olivia Williams, who plays Camilla in “The Crown” series five and has a host of celebrated screen and stage performances to her name. Her voice has been described as a human stratovarius.

And I was greatly honoured that Olivia, who used to be a Booker prize judge, agreed to be the book’s voice. I have in fact, known her since university. And I’m now going to lapse if I may quickly, into confession mode. Because when we were in our mid-20s, I found myself walking through the Highlands of Scotland with Olivia and another mythical Cambridge Beauty. And it was on that day, I think it was actually New Year’s Eve, around the middle of the day already getting quite dark and atmospheric. Olivia made me what I will call for present purposes, an offer I couldn’t refuse if I swam one of Ashe’s deepest and coldest locks. Condition was that I had to swim the lock wearing only my Timex shower proof watch. And naturally aged 22 or 23, looking at Olivia and her friend, Samantha, I swam the lock. Was when I staggered back to shore, I noticed that there were three things missing. The first was Olivia, the second was her friend Samantha, and the third was my clothes. And I was reassured at dinner that evening that this was the oldest trick in the book, to which my response was, “Well, nobody told me.” And so, what was it, ladies and gentlemen, that compelled Olivia to narrate “Codename: Madeleine”? All these years later, I think in a word, guilt. But here is Olivia just reading a small part of the prologue,

• [Olivia] Prologue. Occupied Paris, 1943. Noor’s pace quickened the battered suitcase concealing her mark II radio transmitter was heavy. Caught with a hidden transmitter receiver, she would be taken for immediate interrogation at Gestapo headquarters. As she walked north along the Champs Elysees, she noticed a man engrossed in a copy of Le Monde, fold his newspaper, another on the opposite side of Champs Elysees, put on a pair of sunglasses. Nothing out of place on a warm October day, even in wartime. Noor noticed splashes of colour returning to the drained renoir of occupied Paris. The burgundy of a woman’s beret, the purple of a bougainvillaea entwined around the entrance of a florist, the pink of a ribbon around a box of patisserie. Her inner heartstrings so long taught to the point of snapping, were beginning to release. As she walked, she felt a presence. The man she had seen folding his copy of Le Monde was matching her pace. The man in sunglasses was visible in the reflections of the shop windows was at her imagination. She recalled the last morse transmission from London. “Be extra careful.”

• That’s just the first part of the prologue of the book. And as you’ll see, if you get as far as as reading the book, it starts in 1943 and then we’re catapulted right back in time to 1914 when Noor is born in Moscow. And so the stories all begin with the various characters. And as I’ve said, you then have to try and guess how they weave together and what happens as the story unfolds. Now here’s me, I think in my most immodest mode, but I had to, well, talking now about the reception that the book has had, I, like most authors, particularly first authors, held my breath when the book came out. There’s many a debut author who has had to leave the country and go and live under a pseudo name in Tierra Del Fuego. Luckily, I didn’t have to flee that far. And I hope you’ll allow me to give a short film put together concerning the reception that the book has been lucky enough to have. It is, I confess, a toot of my horn. But luckily the toot itself is provided by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Thank you very much. They say that it takes a village to raise a child. And I think in terms of launching a debut author, it takes a small provincial city. But I’m enormously grateful for everybody, all of the reviewers and book bloggers who have given the book such an amazing and probably undeserved reception. And so, we come back full circle. As I conclude, we come back full circle to my grandfather’s wartime service in Ethiopia, helping to restore the emperor Haile Selassie onto his throne. It was his war, his work in intelligence that sparked his grandson’s interest in SOE. And I have a feeling that my grandfather on the right would be intensely proud to know that he ended up, although he never lived to see him with an Ethiopian great-grandson, Firo, to whom “Codename: Madeleine” is dedicated. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being such a wonderful audience.

• Barnaby, thank you so much. We’re going to now have a bit more of a conversational dinner table chat. And for our audience, please do start putting questions in the chat box because in about 10, 15 minutes, I am going to open up the floor and I’ll monitor the questions and we’ll throw those questions in. If they start flooding in before then of course, we will begin them beforehand. But I wanted to start actually. This is historical fiction. It’s based on real character fiction, Noor Inayat Khan. And I wanted to ask you, why fiction? Why did you make the choice to write it as a novel rather than writing it as a biography or within a wider genre of the second World War as I might, for example? What was it that was the motivation for that?

• That’s a very good question. I’d always wanted to write a novel that was my primary objective. My primary objective when I’m in non barrister mode is to be a novelist as opposed to a historian or a biographer. And it was simply that looking into SOE having understood a bit more about my grandfather’s war, that Noor came to me as a sort of fully formed character in my novel. It just happened to be that, you know, she was real and she lived. And you are right, I could have written the book as a biography, but I just had a feeling that it would touch more people in perhaps a different way, if the story was told as fiction. And there are examples of that. I think that Schindler’s, the film “Schindler’s List” was based on the book “Schindler’s Ark.” And I think “Schindler’s Ark” was based on the real life of Oscar Schindler. But the book itself, “Schindler’s Ark” was written as a novel. And I think originally, it had been put forward as a potential biography. And it was the agent or the editor said that it would actually work better as fiction. Now, I’m not at this stage in any way comparing myself to Shakespeare, but in a lot of Shakespeare plays, particularly the historical ones, Henry V, Henry IV, part one and two, King John, all the Shakespeare historical plays as well as, you know, things like Cleopatra and the like, everybody knows the history, everybody knows what happens. And I suppose, you know, Shakespeare could have come forward and written Henry V as a biography, but he decided to turn it into a play. And I think for that reason, it has its own power and pathos that perhaps you wouldn’t get if it was written as a biography. And in this book, you’re quite right, it is written about a real character with real events. And I think 90% of the characters are real. There is one character who is actually an amalgam of all sorts of other different people by the name of George Moel, who is actually a fictional character, but he’s based on various characters that I came across. But that Helen is the reason. That’s the reason why.

• Yeah, it’s a great answer because I remember that in reading this, it’s an extraordinary book. I read it a couple of months ago ahead of the festival we were involved in together. And you actually feel as though you are walking invisibly alongside Noor during her journey. It is utterly extraordinary. And the flare and the writing. You know, how easy does it come to you, the writing? You know, do you find it, you’ve got it as a natural skill because the descriptions that you know, throughout the novel, you’re just instantly there. You don’t have to work hard in your head. you know, you’re walking alongside Noor, but also you feel you are absolutely there in wartime Paris, for example. So is that something that you have to work hard at or is it something which comes quite naturally?

• Well, thank you, first of all for saying such amazing things, particularly coming from you about the book and the writing. I think it was Hemmingway that said, “There’s nothing to writing, you just sit at the typewriter and bleed.” In other words, I don’t find writing particularly easy, particularly if it’s good writing and I find that I have to come back, I have to go back over it a good deal, go through a number of edits. But I think that as a barrister, I have a little advantage in the sense that as a prosecutor, which I’ve been mainly in the last 10 years, if you are prosecuting in a complex terrorist case, you have the opportunity of opening the case to the jury at the beginning of the trial. And I think that an effective prosecutor really is quite a good storyteller because if you can engage the jury and get them interested in the story of the case, then you’re 9/10 or 8/10 away along the track in terms of actually achieving what you want to in the case. And so I think that I wasn’t starting as a writer completely stone cold because I had experience of doing opening and closing speeches in my career as a barrister. And I think that that probably gave me a little bit of an advantage because you get used as a barrister to putting across quite complex thoughts, ideas, and quite complicated castless in a way that hopefully by the end of the case, the jury can actually understand what the case has been all about. And so, in answer to your question, I had a little bit of a head start with my work. But I don’t think I, at any stage, found the writing easy. And sometimes, when I reread passages of the book, you know, I sometimes think how I would’ve done it slightly differently now. But it’s one of those things as you know, probably better than anybody. It’s one of those things you get a little bit better at with experience.

• Yeah, writing is part of a journey, isn’t it? And one kind of falls into it gradually as you go. So where would you say you get your inspiration? Because at some point when we’re working on the material, whether one’s writing fiction or even on the research journey, which I want to come in a moment to the incredible level of research and where you got it from, but where do you find your inspiration? Is it just something deep within that you read something and that just sparks within you? Where do you draw that inspiration to write?

• Yes, I think it’s partly the subject matter, and I’m of the generation that was born after the war, but when I was growing up, you know, there were war films on TV every weekend. And I think that somewhere, even though I sort of grew up during the flower power era, you know, when I was a kid, I think somewhere deep down, I was really affected by the fact that this country, as in the UK and Europe was very nearly taken over by an appalling tyranny. And I think that somewhere deep down, I’d always had a very, very strong sense that particularly in England, the chips really were down, particularly in 1940 and you know that better than anybody. And were it not for that many, you know, individuals of extreme courage, we wouldn’t be in the situation that we are now. And the other layer that I would put into this is just a sort of bizarre one, but in my work as a counter-terrorist prosecutor, I’ve done quite a lot of religious terrorist cases or terrorist cases inspired by religion. But I’ve also done a lot of terrorist cases inspired by neo-Nazi terrorism, which has been a real problem in the UK and also in the US and Eastern Europe. And I think that that sort of underlines how close things got a generation ago. And I think that always part of me was very conscious of what had happened and what had been avoided or evaded. And so I think what inspired me were just these extraordinary individuals and we live in a world now of, you know, health and safety and, you know, some degrees of thoughts are travelled by the and all the rest of it. And you go back a couple of generations and people were, you know, risking their lives every day for years on end without really giving it a second thought. And so I think it’s a tribute deep down to an extraordinary generation.

• And it’s really clear because of the level of detail and just so well done. As I said, you’re just literally walking with Noor, the level of research that you must have undertaken. So can you give us a flavour? Did you spend time in the national archive? Did you go to the Imperial War Museum? Can you give us an idea of where you drew your research? Because good novel, you need fantastic research, don’t you, as a base?

• Well, in answer to your question, the first thing I did was to build an SOE library. There are probably now about 10 books on SOE, the leading book is called “SOE 1940 to 1946” by MRD Foot who you you’ll know of. Who actually was alive during the war and I think was in the first regiment of the SAS, but he wrote the sort of the lead text on SOE. There are other books that there are some very good biographies of Noor Inayat Khan. I also read Leo Marks’s book “Between Silk and Cyanide.” I have to say completely honestly, I found the cryptographic aspect of the book extremely difficult. I would’ve no doubt failed as an SOE agent with my cryptography. But this double transposition that people like Noor did would’ve foxed me completely. I then did spend time both myself and with a researcher at the National Archive and also quite heavily at the NP of War Museum where you can actually listen to recordings of other agents who were around at the same time as Noor who either went into Occupy Paris or for whatever reason, they didn’t go. And so you can actually listen to the voices of people who knew her. And as a result of that, I sort of came a little bit to understand how I thought that she might speak. And that’s how in the book the dialogue I think is quite important. And it’s listening to individuals who knew her that really allowed me to know the character very well. And then I had had somebody back at my old university at Cambridge who went to the university library and did a bit of work for me there as well. So I was very lucky by having one or two researchers and then having the time to build up the SOE library that I have.

• We’ve got questions coming in, so I think I’ll sort of mix it up now.

• Yes, of course.

Q&A and Comments:

• If we can, Barnaby. We’ve had obviously in these terrible times, the situation going on in the Israel Hamas war. We’ve had a message from Lynn saying she hopes she can see the whole of your session today because the rockets are going off and they might be in their bunkers. I mean, you know, such a reminder even this evening. So we’ve had a message come through. I hope things are okay about end this evening. Yeah, you know, we’re all standing there with Israel and it’s so, so tough.

Q: Yes, we have a question from Judy. “Do you actually deal,” I don’t know if you’re allowed to do any spoilers here. Cover your ears for those who don’t want to hear the answer, but do you deal with the deaths she’s asking of Noor? I mean it is horrific and it’s sort of linked into question I had for you, what was the hardest scene to write? And in my head, I imagine that might be it. So do you want to comment? Because Noor did pay the ultimate price, didn’t she?

A - Yes, I think spoiler alert to those that don’t want to know, the book features a large range of individuals of whom Noor is the protagonist and is the heroine. But I think it’s fair to say that all of them come to a very tragic end. And you are absolutely right in terms of writing the the latter part of the book, I think it’s the final two chapters when Noor is first of all, arrested and then incarcerated. I found incredibly difficult and I had to speak to a friend of mine who was a sort of in the position as being a sort of friendly editor, but also a little bit as a therapist. Because I found the writing so difficult. And I think if the book does anything towards the latter stages of the book, I think it does bring you very viscerally into the world of, you know, somebody who has been captured is not able to swallow her cyanide pill. And it’s really the nightmare situation of what happens if you are a captured agent. And I don’t cast any judgement on anybody because some agents cracked under interrogation and some didn’t. And I don’t feel able to cast any judgement on anybody. But what I can say in the case of Agent Madeleine is that she withstood the most appalling torture and she gave nothing away. And so the salute that I have for her is eternal.

Q - Absolutely. And in fact, it would be helpful at this point, I think to go back to your slide with Leo Marks and Noor. It’s a very powerful, I mean, you know, on one level we look at it as a very well known jacket cover, that’s it. Leo Marks book, “Between Silk and Cyanide” which is a sort of manual, isn’t it? It’s on every historian’s mantelpiece and bookcase. But it’s fascinating, isn’t it? Because Leo Marks, Jewish and Noor Inayat Khan, a Muslim. I mean, isn’t that a message for our time, do you think? Or is that going too far?

A - I don’t think it’s going too far. And I think, Helen, you’ve alighted a very poignant part of the book, and part of what we’re going through at the moment, I think one of the interesting aspects of SOE because it was thrown together in a great hurry in the context of an enormous emergency, is that it couldn’t really be too fussy about, you know, it was multi-denominational, it was multiethnic and it was in the truest sense, a broad church or a broad mosque, whichever terminology you wish to use. And so I think what drew me to SOE was that it was this extraordinary melting pot of individuals. And some of them, you know, not to put too finer point on it, were actually dredged from the prisons of England because they were expert forges safe breakers and burglars. And SOE, you know, was willing to get its sleeves rolled up. But in answer to the broader question, you basically had a number of individuals from completely different backgrounds fighting a common enemy. And as you rightly observe, Leo Marks was from a family of Jewish booksellers, and their bookshop was at 48 Charing Cross Road, which went on to become a book in itself when a woman called Helen Hemp. later on she published a series of letters between herself, a New York Jew and the head of the bookshop that went on over the post-war years. And that then became its own play. But that was a Jewish booksellers full of other, you know, Jewish booksellers with a large Jewish clientele. And it was Leo Marks, a Jew, who was giving Noor the final brush up on her coding before she went to Paris. And so you had a Jew helping as best he could, a Muslim, prepare for war. He was very worried about her going, it comes out in the book and he really wobbled about whether he could send her and a lot depended on whether her coding at the last minute made the grade. And for those that read the book, you’ll see that she kind of at the very last minute, showed that her coding was extremely proficient. He wobbled and he did send her and he knew what danger he was letting her into. But as you rightly observe the pathos here is the Jew preparing the Muslim for war.

Q - Very powerful. We’ve had another question in, actually, and I’ll read it as it’s come in. Is one of the biggest differences between nonfiction biography and history and a novel, the freedom to formulate dialogue? It’s an interesting question.

A - Well, if I may answer, I think it’s a brilliant question and one of the freedoms you are given as a novelist or be it working with real characters is that first of all, dialogue becomes very important as the questioner observes. So not only do you get the freedom to express how you believe your protagonist or other characters would’ve spoken in real life. It’s not just that. You also get the internal dialogue. And as readers will appreciate if they delve into the book, but part of it is actual dialogue. But towards the end of the book, there’s Noor’s internal dialogue and her dialogue with her father, albeit deceased, which becomes I think quite an important part of the book. And so I think the questioner really beautifully, if I may say so, lights on a great privilege that I’ve been given or slightly given myself, which is using dialogue to express the story in a way that you couldn’t hope to do if you were writing a biography, both dialogue with other people and the internal dialogue when you are all alone in a prison cell or the internal dialogue when you’re subject to torture.

• And I guess that gives us an insight into the characters and their humanity, you know, what it does to make us human? And of course, if I was to add stuff like that into my books, well, you know, what’s the historical evidence that they actually sent this kind of? So yeah, we can’t go as far as you do in the picture. So it is true. You have a degree more freedom, but you can really begin to understand those characters I think in a way that’s different. You’re right, in nonfiction.

Q: We have another question, this one from David, and I’m not sure how much you know of contemporary history of Ethiopia to answer this. He asks, “Today, Ethiopia seems to be a failed country, yet in the 1960s it was one of Africa’s most stable countries. Was this due to Haile Selassie’s lack of vision?” Do you have a view on that?

A - Yes, I mean, I’m probably not really equipped to answer the question, but I think what David’s question shows is that Ethiopia has always been a little bit different. If you go to Ethiopia, which I have done a number of occasions, they don’t really think of themselves as being in Africa that if you say, “I’ve just come in from Kenya,” they say, “Oh, you’ve been travelling in Africa.” They sort of see themselves as a little bit different. But I think that Ethiopia was different because it didn’t really have the same colonial experience as other countries, other nearby countries. For example, Kenya and Tanzania, I mean the Italians, they tried to colonise Ethiopia, but they didn’t do particularly well. And as my Italian friends say that they were the only country, that was actually I think the only country, the only European country that was actually repelled by the local population. And you know, there was a little bit of help from the British, but the Ethiopians ultimately expelled Mussolini and his various people. It remained an empire until I think the early seventies when Haile Selassie died. But I think part of the problem, and I’m probably not qualified, you know, to comment, but I think that Haile Selassie, there were a number of famines. We know about the one in 1985 that was the live eight one. But actually they’d started I think in the '70s. And I don’t think the Ethiopian Royal Court really dealt with the famines particularly well. And in the palace, in Addis Ababa, I’m told that under the ornate carpet, there were lots and lots of wads of $100 bills.

And so the emperor was sitting on this enormous wealth, which could have been used in the various famines. And there were three famines in succession. And it was the 1985 one that drew everybody’s attention to that. But he had already died back in the 1970s. And then there was a, you know, socialist stroke, communist red terror. And so I think, I can’t really answer David’s question, but I think that Ethiopia for a time was an enormous sort of shining light. And now unfortunately, it’s been bedevilled with, you know, factional fighting and in the north. There’s the two grand people who want to separate. And Ethiopia has been quite unstable recently. But having said that, I went over to adopt my son, Firo, in 2009 and 2010, and I’ve been over there in 2012 and it’s one of the most stable African countries I’ve ever been to. And so I’m hopeful that eventually, things will settle down in Ethiopia and it will go back to how it was.

Q - We’ve had a question about, on a very practical level, about the Kindle. I think someone’s tried to look up the Kindle. Do you have it on Kindle? This novel?

A - Yes. In answer to your question or the question is yes, you can go to the Amazon, there’s an Amazon page for the book and you can either buy the paperback or the Kindle edition or you can go to a different page and get the audio book read by Olivia. So it is in all of those formats. If you search, you know, “Codename: Madeleine” Kindle edition, you should get it. To make matters even more complicated, somebody did do a book with the same title, but it’s “Code Name” two words, which is more of a historical look at Noor’s life. And so to make everything even more complicated, there is a book of a similar title floating around in the ether, but we don’t talk about it.

• The Kindle link has been posted in the chat.

• Well I’m very grateful to your very efficient support team, Helen. Thank you.

Q - Oh, that’s wonderful 'cause I can’t see the link. I’m absolutely not your best person at technology actually. So there is a good biography, says Joe, she’s absolutely right, called “Spy Princess” by Shrabani Basu who played a large part in getting plaque in her memory unveiled in London. And of course, there’s that famous painting which has been unveiled recently by Queen Camilla. I don’t know if you saw that, there’s a huge painting to Noor. Now there’s a lot of commemorations around her. Why do you think that’s sort of happening now? Why did light on Noor? It’s fantastic that it’s happening, but there’s a lot happening, isn’t there?

A - Yes, I know that 12 or 13 years ago, the Princess Royal unveiled a statue to Noor in Gordon Square, which is one of the London offices where she lived. And I think it was around that time that people began to appreciate Noor’s story. It’s always been slightly better known in France. There is a Madeleine in France, which celebrates in Paris that celebrates her under her agent name. And it may be because, you know, she was ultimately active in Paris that the French knew knew more about her and she was given the quadriga as you know. I think in the last, you know, 10, 15 years, there has been much more of an appreciation of the huge diversity of people in both world wars who were involved. And you’ll have seen if you drive near Hyde Park corner, that there are the amazing commemorations of soldiers from the Indian subcontinent, from South Africa, from the West Indies. And I think that, you know, one of the benefits of history in the last 10 years is that it has become much more colorblind and much more diverse. And I think Noor’s story has really caught the imagination. And the fact of the matter is that when the chips were down in 1940 and 1941, it was a Sufi mystic woman who stood up to the plate and went over to Paris as an SOE agent. And that fact in itself is just extraordinary. And I think rightly she’s getting the recognition that she deserves.

Q - Hmm. There’s a really good way of explaining it. Got a couple of more questions and then a final question finishing our session today. So Roger has asked, how does your book differ from the book of the same name by Arthur Magida? Do you know that one?

A - Yes, I do. That’s its doppelganger. I think that that is based, I haven’t read it. I have to be completely honest about that. I haven’t read it for deliberate reason. I think that that book relies quite a lot on a lot of source material, a lot of letters and diaries that were written by Noor and other members of her family. And I think it’s very deeply ingrained with Sufism, which I’m not an expert on, but I have come to learn a little bit about it. And so my book differs because it’s written as a novel. It does have source materials, but it’s not footnoted in a way that this other book would be. And while the other book really goes in, I think to the nuts and bolts and great detail in terms of Sufi beliefs, I allowed myself as you know, Helen having read the book, some references to Sufism and Noor’s Sufi beliefs. But I’ve tried to make it a strand of the book without getting completely overwhelmed because it is an enormously complex and beautiful subject. But for reasons that you will appreciate, there is a Sufi mystical theme that runs through the book, but it’s one of a number of different themes.

Q - Yeah. And as Ingrid has pointed out, there is that fabulous film. Well, I very much enjoyed it, “A Call to Spy” in which Noor is one of the central characters alongside Vera Atkins and Virginia Hall. So that’s really worth seeing. I think it’s on Netflix and other channels. “A Call to Spy” is worth looking at. So one other question from the audience before I. So did you want to comment?

A - All I was going to say, this is really harks back to the other question of Noor coming into or your question, Noor coming into the public consciousness. She also appears in “Doctor Who.” There’s a time travel bit in one of the most recent “Doctor Who” series where you see Noah tapping out her messages in a Paris attic. So your question of comments aptly on “A Call to Spy,” also, “Doctor Who.”

Q - We have a question from Marshall, what is the status of the Selassie family and other characters from a historical perspective? So just want to comment for anyone who hasn’t heard of the Selassie family? Just to briefly comment.

A - Well, in my life, Haile Selassie loomed up as somebody that was befriended or befriended my grandfather. The book itself doesn’t deal with, it’s not concerned with Ethiopia or Haile Selassie. And just to put it into sort of context, it was through my grandfather’s service in Ethiopia and his connection with the intelligence services that I became interested in SOE. And so everything came full circle when I came to adopt my son. You can’t just spin the globe, you have to have a country that you are connected with. And so I had my connection with Ethiopia through my grandfather’s wartime service. But it’s fair to say that in “Codename: Madeleine,” my book, we travel all over the world, we’re in South America, we’re in all sorts of different European countries. We’re also in India, but we don’t get as far as Ethiopia.

Q - It’s a wonderful book. I really encourage everyone to read it, to go out and buy it. I’m going to finish with just a couple of strands actually. Because certainly for myself as a historian, I quite often get asked about research, how people can find more about their families, and particularly with our audience, there are a lot of families with stories that are thinking, you know, it is time they want to write about their family stories to pass it on, not only within their families, but to leave something, a trail and an understanding of particularly of Holocaust survival, of just being one example, but not the only example. And others, for example, who fought German Jewish refugees, emigres from right across Europe who fought for the United States or for Britain. So what advice would you give if we’ve got people within our audience who really want to start writing, what would be your advice?

A - My goodness, I think that I’m almost inclined to duck that one Helen, and pass that straight back to you as a professional historian. But I think, I think the first thing to do is to try and archive the immediate source material that relates to your family. And so if there are photographs, if there are diaries and if there are letters, it is absolutely essential that you preserve your primary sources. And I suspect as a historian, you probably agree with that.

• Oh, absolutely, yeah.

• In my grandfather’s case, you know, in fact one of the main photographs has been lost. And so the main thing is to produce a family archive. And then there are a number of websites that you can go to. I mean, I’ve spent time with the forces websites and it was through them that I discovered that my grandfather had the title of a Special Duties Officer, which is a euphemism for working in intelligence and espionage. And so that’s quite a well-known. I’ll be able to, I think at some stage, put a link up for that. But I think nowadays, there are, you know, websites where you can put a name in and they can find out somebody’s service record if that is easy to do. Where they’re buried. I mean, there’s obviously the Commonwealth War Commission, which does amazing work, you know, finding graves all over the world. And so I think my very primitive suggestion would be to get your source material marshalled. Maybe put it in a scrapbook or something so that you can then show, you know, people of you know, subsequent generation have it mapped out nicely in a scrapbook. And I think armed with that knowledge, there are now websites that you can go to and then you can start to build the picture. And it may be that you are then connected with a family of somebody that’s served alongside your ancestor and they’ve got, you know, other letters and diaries that might, you know, relate to your ancestor. And so you can start to build the picture. I was privileged when I started writing this book, I was shown various diaries from the second World war, from you know, somebody in Resistance Paris. But anything that’s original, you know, bag it and tag it, put it somewhere safe would be my suggestion.

• And then start the writing if that’s what they-

• And then start writing.

• That’s wonderful.

• Exactly.

Q - Yeah. My very final question very, very quickly. before we finish today, what’s next? You mentioned at the beginning about a series, which is a hint that you are still writing. So what’s next?

A - Well done for picking up the scent. Yes, there is another book which I hope is going to come out about this time next year with a fair wind. It’s part of a series. And so it’s based on another SOE agent, somebody that was in France roughly at the same time as Noor but it’s based on what’s called I think in obituaries, a confirmed bachelor, which is another way of saying a gay man. And this is an agent who was a former circus performer and acrobat and slightly B movie actor who then became an SOE agent and served with enormous bravery and distinction in occupied France going there on three separate missions. And in his case, although he had a very difficult war, he did actually survive. And so the next book is called “Codename: God-Given” or for those that prefer the French.

• Sounds exciting. Barnaby, thank you. May I say a huge thanks from all of lockdown audience for joining us today, for sharing insights into your novel, into the journey. And I hope our audience have taken something away and will help them as well in their journey. Good luck with everything.

• Thank you.

• And we look forward to seeing you again.

• Thank you.

• Thank you so much.

• It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.