Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months, you’ve likely heard of ChatGPT, the new AI bot that is taking the tech world (and the rest of the world) by storm. Ask it for a marketing plan for your Airbnb and it will spit something out within seconds… and something quite […]
Is the AI bot ChatGPT Useful for Historical Research? Read More »
And…. I’m back! Sorry for the long radio silence on this blog. Life got a bit hectic and writing seems to be the first thing to go. I’ve also been waiting on a few books/documents which seem to be taking forever to arrive. I’ll just blame it on Covid and supply-chain issues! I’m still chipping
Robin W.G. Stephens – A Younger and Leaner View of the Man Read More »
For several years now, I have been trying to have a look at an episode from Foyle’s War. The episode, entitled “The Cage”, apparently aired in Season 7 of the extremely popular UK TV series. One would think that the episode would have been relatively easy to track down, but living in North America makes
The Tin-Eye Character in Foyle’s War episode, The Cage Read More »
Last week, I received a fascinating comment from Giles, a follower of this blog, who is as intrigued by Robin William George Stephens as I am. Giles had come across a Sydney Sun (New South Wales) newspaper article from 1938 which featured the recollections of an aviatrix who had met Stephens in Addis Ababa (Abyssinia)
Mysterious Aviatrix remembered the “Most Interesting” Robin W.G. Stephens Read More »
Well, that was fun. For the last 9-10 months, I’ve been working through the published blog posts bringing their formatting into line with the WordPress. In the process, I checked external and internal links and I think everything is now working… or I hope so. If anyone finds any hiccups, please use the contact form
A Potential Break in Robin W.G. Stephens Research Read More »
For a while now, I’ve been thinking that I should (a) write a review of Gentleman Spymaster, Geoffrey Elliott’s book about T.A. Robertson and (b) reach out to Mr. Elliott to see if he has contact info for Robertson’s daughter, in the hope that she might have some snippet of information from her father’s files
Tangential Research Lead on R.W.G. Stephens via T.A. Robertson Read More »
While revamping the formatting on some of my older blogs, I came across this reference to the BBC Timewatch series on The Spies Who Fooled Hitler. The show had some fascinating interviews with former secretaries and interrogators from MI5’s secret interrogation centre, Camp 020 (a.k.a. Ham or Latchmere House). I wrote a blog about some
A Photograph of Robin W.G. Stephens from BBC’s Timewatch series (1999) Read More »
A few months ago, I came across this blog post on Huntercombe (Camp 020R) by Tony Percy on his Coldspur site. The post had a number of stunning photographs of a group of officers, including R.W.G. Stephens, inspecting the troops at Camp 020 (Latchmere House). I asked Tony if he could put me in touch
The Many Faces of Robin W.G. Stephens Read More »
The Book Spy! Six Stories of Modern Espionage. Richard Deacon and Nigel West. British Broadcasting Corporation, London. 1980. Background Given how much controversy the 1980 Spy! television episode on Camp 020 aroused… I thought I would try and track down the accompanying book, written by Richard Deacon and Nigel West. I found one online and
Behind every good spy interrogator, there’s a secretary taking the notes and typing up reports. This was true for Lt. Col. Robin W.G. Stephens, commandant and interrogator par excellence at MI5’s secret wartime interrogation centre, Camp 020. While Stephens was verbally demolishing the hapless spy who appeared in his interrogation room, the exchange was always
Wartime Secretaries turned Spycatchers Read More »