I've been a fan of Michael Ridpath's work since before I first met him, which in itself is quite a long time ago. He's a versatile and interesting writer and I'm very glad to feature a guest post from him:
'There comes a point in the middle of my research when it’s time to read The Times.
I suppose it would be possible to do this online somehow, but that’s not the way I like to do it. In the basement of the London Library in St James’s Square is The Times Room. Large red leather-bound copies of The Times, each heavy, each three feet tall, line the shelves in cabinets, one for each month. There are special lecterns upon which you can open them and browse; the Foreign and Colonial news is usually on about page 8. I love it down there.
My latest novel, Operation
Berlin, takes place in August and September of 1930, and so I read through
copies of The Times for each day, taking notes of what the Berlin
correspondent had to say. At that time,
he was an old hand named Norman Ebbutt, but he is never identified in the paper
itself. There is usually at least one
article – or maybe two – on the goings-on in Germany each day. But I allow myself to be distracted: by the
advertisements on page 1 for domestic servants and enigmatic personal messages
in a rudimentary code; by the page-long descriptions of the Belvoir Hunt’s
outing a couple of days before; by the minutiae of cricket scores by batsmen
with at least three initials and two hyphenated last names. And the advertisements, of course, for
Bovril, Beecham’s Laxatives, Imperial Airways and the Austin Seven.
But back to ‘our Berlin
correspondent’. My eye was caught by a
short article on 29 August 1930 about a Frau Amlinger who had thrown herself
out of a Lufthansa mail plane flying from Frankfurt to Erfurt. She was the wife of a Reichswehr cavalry
officer, Captain Sepp Amlinger, who served in the air force during the war and
who had died in an aeroplane accident in Russia.
Interesting. Very interesting.
Further investigation on my part
paralleled that of The Times’s correspondent. It turned out that Captain Amlinger was part
of a secret contingent of the Reichswehr being trained as fighter pilots at a
training facility in the Soviet Union.
Cover-ups ensued, and a nice little subplot was born. Now, all I need to do is book myself onto an
Imperial Airways flying boat to Alexandria for £55. Not tempted by the Beecham’s Laxatives,
though.'
Michael Ridpath’s Operation
Berlin is published by Boldwood Books on 12 April
3 comments:
This post popped up in my feed beside one from Alan Jacobs. In my mind, there is a fairly large "Venn diagram" intersection between them, although they have different trajectories.
(Btw - hopefully you're watching out for Alan's upcoming biography of Dorothy Sayers with OUP, though I've no idea of its publication date. Possibly in time for Christmas 2026!)
What an intriguing guest column! Thank you. I think it was Josephine Tey, in The Daughter Of Time, who reflected that the real history lies hidden in the small details considered innocuous at the time, but Sepp Amlinger's wife certainly made the news. And questions - such as how did she get herself onto a freight plane and what special point was she intending to make by jumping out of it?
I notice her husband was a cavalry officer. A neat link to a little story that has always fascinated me relating to a country house training spies in WW1. The story is tucked away in an old county history of my home county. Acting as a hunting box (in one of the Shires) explained the presence of an ever changing collection of young men - including one who was a Prussian Count and cavalry officer preparing to be a double agent, and who always rode side saddle when out hunting. A wonderful sleight of hand to concentrate people on other things than his special role in training.
David, Liz, thanks very much!
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