Forgotten Friday: The Small Back Room by Nigel Balchin (1943, William Collins and Sons; reissued 2000 by Cassell)

Sammy Rice works as a scientist in a small outfit that seeks to produce and evaluate inventions that are useful to the war effort and which reports directly to the Minister for War. Despite his academic skills he suffers from poor self-esteem after having his left foot amputated in 1928 and replaced with an aluminium substitute. With a penchant for feeling sorry for himself, he often swaps whiskey for his pain-killing tablets, and waits for his girlfriend to leave him for somebody more worthy. Things are not made any easier by having to deal with endless rounds of petty politics at work between the scientists, civil servants and the army, for which he has little appetite. When the Germans start to drop a new type of booby trapped bomb, which explodes when disturbed, the army turns to Sammy in the hope that he can find a way to defuse them, and Sammy embraces the task sensing that this is a way to repair his esteem and make a real difference to the war effort.

Nigel Balchin started the war as a psychologist in the personnel section of the War Office before transferring to the Army Council, eventually becoming Deputy Scientific Officer. By the end of the war he’d risen to the rank of Brigadier General. His insider knowledge of how science was being employed to help the war effort gives The Small Back Room an authentic feel. Indeed, I was somewhat surprised that the book had been published during the war given that he paints a fairly negative picture of Whitehall politics, the organisation of the scientific research, and relations between the civilian scientists, the civil service and the army. It’s not difficult to suspect the novel might have been written as a means to highlight how things needed to change.

I found the story very engaging. Although told from a first person perspective, the story largely unfolds through dialogue with only a few reflective interludes. The conversations are exceptionally well written and give real insight to the nature of the main characters. And given this style it’s easy to imagine that the book was relatively painless to adapt for the big screen, which it was in 1948. In general, the plot is highly believable and the petty politics and manoeuvrings of personal and inter-departmental rivalries are well done and will be familiar to anybody who works in a university or the civil service. Some of the emotional turmoil is a little overwrought, but otherwise a highly enjoyable read and I’d certainly be interested in watching the film adaptation.

The Neutral Isle

It’s 70 years to the day that Ireland declared its neutrality in the Second World War. After Germany’s invasion of Poland on Sept 1st, the Irish Government led by Eamon de Valera declared a state of emergency and neutrality on Sept 2nd and ratified the The Emergency Powers Act on Sept 3rd. The Act, which led to the war rather euphemistically being termed The Emergency in Ireland, effectively gave the Irish government license to run the country as it saw fit for the duration of European hostilities including powers of censorship of media and mail and internment.

Neutrality was broadly welcomed by all political parties in Ireland. The country had been an independent state for less than 20 years and was still working its way through the legacy of its civil war and division from Northern Ireland. It was also a poor nation that was ill-equipped to fight any kind of war or defend itself from the kind of Blitzkrieg attack as unleashed on Poland (there were only a handful of anti-aircraft guns, a couple of obsolete planes, and a tiny professional army).

Officially favouring no side, neutrality was strictly adhered to throughout the war with British, French, German, Japanese, the United States and other states representatives based in Dublin. The government nor the press endeavoured to show any partiality to either side (the media were particularly hamstrung as they could not print or play newsreels or films that explicitly favoured one side or could be considered propaganda) and sought to repress all foreign intelligence activity regardless of source (which it actually did effectively despite the rumour-mongering of the British that Ireland was awash with German spies).

Neutrality was designed to both to stave off an attack from either side (and contingency plans were made to deal with invasion by both Britain and Germany) and to maintain harmonious relations within the Irish population many of whom were anti-British (though not necessarily pro-Nazi) after independence and the on-going debate over Northern Irish sovereignty. This neutral position clearly annoyed Churchill who repeatedly tried to bully de Valera into passing the treaty ports back into British hands and cast quite scurrilous accusations about Ireland’s role in the war, which were largely unfounded.

In practice, Ireland lent towards the Allies. Allied airmen and sailors were passed back across the border, intelligence gathered by Irish agencies was secretly shared with the British, over 50,000 Irish men served in the British armed forces (there are only a handful of documented cases of Irish men serving in German forces), hundreds of thousands of men and women worked in British factories, and German Legation activities were heavily monitored and policed. In addition, de Valera interned scores of IRA men – those most likely to be sympathetic to Germany - in the Curragh camp where 3 died on hunger strike seeking political status. The wish to remain neutral to the very end of the war though did backfire to a certain degree in the final days of the European conflict when de Valera presented condolences on the death of Hitler to the German Legation in Dublin (the only official head of state to do so). At this time it was clear the war was over and the atrocities of the death camps were well known and the gesture almost certainly did great damage to Ireland’s political reputation at the time especially with respect to the United States.

The largest geopolitical project in living memory

Over the past year I've read a number of novels set either just before or during the second world war including books by Alan Furst, Philip Kerr, John Lawton, Marek Krajewski, Hans Fallada, Carlo Lucarelli and others, along with some straight history books, but I haven't been keeping track of history itself. Today marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War and Germany's invasion of Poland (The Polish Officer by Furst does a good job of capturing the first few days as Poland desperately tries to put in place the basis for resistance knowing that it is being over-run).

Of course, I haven't pre-prepared a post, but I have been thinking about doing one based on a conversation I had with Martin Dodge last week, so I'm hastily moving it forward. At his Mapping Manchester exhibition we were talking about whether the John Ryland's library had survived the blitz intact and that led onto a discussion about bomb census maps. Martin kindly sent me on a link to a story that discussed them. I'd be really interested to take a look at them in more detail. I always remember the two old ladies who lived next door when I was growing up who used to describe going up Caldy Hill to watch Liverpool and Birkenhead docks being bombed. They were great story-tellers - you felt like you were there watching the cities burn.

The tracing below is from the Christmas raids of Dec 20-22, 1940 on the Merseyside area when 365 people died. It is designed to be overlain on a base map, hence why there are so few roads, etc. shown (much cheaper to keep a clean map and have lots of tracings). A daily tracing would be taken so that the pattern of bombing could be tracked over time.


The tracing shows the area between Bootle and Walton and plots 26 separate incidents in quite a confined area. Each incident is given a number, followed by the size and type of bomb, and the location of any unexploded ordnance. Collectively the maps reveal that by the end of the war Liverpool was the second most bombed UK city after London.

These other maps are of Brighton and Bristol.

I've been fascinated by the Second World War for a while now given it was the largest and most complex geopolitical event in modern history with many civil wars operating inside transnational wars, and political ideology explicitly reshaping territory and lives through violence. I've been trying to collect books that explains what went on different parts of the world, including some that traditionally get looked over (e.g. Aleutian Islands [the only bit of the USA occupied by the Japanese], Malta, Isle of Man, Ireland, etc) so I can have a go at mentally stitching the whole lot together.

I'll perhaps try to do something on Irish neutrality tomorrow. Ireland declared its neutrality on the 2nd Sept, the day before Britain and France declared war. It was a policy that was rigidly maintained right to the end of the war.

Lest we forget ...