This post is written by Dr Alan Burton, Research Fellow on the AHRC-funded Writers in Intelligence: The Secret State and the Public Sphere, a research project involving the War Studies Department at King’s College and the English Department at Brunel University. He has recently written ‘Fact, Fake or Fiction?: the disguised spy novels of Bernard Newman in the 1930s’, Intelligence and National Security, forthcoming 2024.
In 1930, Basil Liddell Hart reviewed Adventure, the war memoirs of Major-General, the Right Hon. J.E.B. Seely. He noted the General’s criticism (‘often devastating’) of wartime battlefield tactics and strategy, and here, surprisingly, he found a marked similarity with the recently published novel The Cavalry Went Through by the unknown Bernard Newman. Liddell Hart coined the phrase ‘“strategic” war novel’ to capture Newman’s sophisticated handling in story form of the tactical innovation of using irregular forces and the conflict-winning deployment of the war’s newest invention, the tank (The Daily Telegraph, 11 February, 1930). Newman, who would go on to be a popular writer and broadcaster, and Liddell Hart, already establishing himself as a leading military historian and thinker, would maintain a correspondence up to Newman’s death in 1968, and each man remained something of an admirer of the other. A number of items in the the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives testify to this relationship.
Newman had joined up in 1914, initially serving as a despatch rider on the Western Front, and eventually reaching the relatively lowly rank of staff sergeant. He joined the Ministry of Works after the war and took to travel and writing in his spare time. Like many greatly affected by the war, he decided to write up some of his experiences and observations, unusually choosing the novel as the most suitable form for treating his ideas. The Cavalry Went Through was published early in 1930 and immediately caught some attention; not least from Basil Liddell Hart, who was then military correspondent at The Daily Telegraph.
Clearly intrigued, Liddell Hart bestowed the unusual honour of a substantial review for a novel, which he headed ‘A Strategist in Fiction’. The story he found ‘realistic in atmosphere’ and ‘militarily plausible’, and the critic offered praise for the ‘verisimilitude to Mr Newman’s imagination’. Liddell Hart was at something of a loss that a popular writer could conjure up such a convincing narrative. After all, the introduction of real soldiers and statesmen into the story, under thinly disguised noms de guerre, and ‘aptly portrayed’ no less, hinted at genuine insider knowledge. The habit of using ‘real’ personages and the ‘very intimate knowledge of men and war shown by the author’, made Liddell Hart suspicious. Who was hiding behind the name of Bernard ‘New Man’, he wondered? (The Daily Telegraph, 10 February, 1930).
In his autobiography, Newman alluded to the review and the suspicions raised. As he reported,
The publication of the book led to interesting friendships and acquaintanceships. Captain B.H. Liddell Hart reviewed it at length … He suspected that my name was a pseudonym and … I wrote to him to reassure him: we met, then and frequently afterwards.
He arranged one very interesting private lunch at one of the Service clubs, so that some of the military intellectuals could satisfy themselves that I had written the book. The company included men like Sir James Edmonds, the Official War Historian, who needed no convincing, for I had studied my background and written part of the book in his offices; Major-General Sir Ernest Swinton, the progenitor of tanks; Major-General J.F.C. Fuller; Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice, and Major-General Younghusband of Lhasa fame. (Bernard Newman, Speaking from Memory, 1960: 62)
In his turn, Newman, a genuine admirer of Liddell Hart as a military historian, returned the courtesy. In 1935, he began writing spy stories, and in the first of these, Spy, the author pays Liddell Hart the unusual compliment of having him as a character in his espionage story. Newman’s novel deceit was to have himself as a First World war spy and in the story he has just completed a (wholly fictitious) mission and is back in Blighty, where he is fêted at a military party. He notes in particular a conspicuous guest:
There was one man among the whole crowd whom I did not forget and whom I have not forgotten to this day. He was not distinguished-looking from the military point of view. He wore the badges of a captain, but he looked far more like the cartoonist’s idea of a learned professor than a military man at all. Tall and exceedingly thin, the only distinguishing feature about him was the great, broad forehead which crowned an exceptionally small face. It was as if nature had stinted him right up to the brain-box and then let herself go properly. (Spy, D. Appleton-Century, New York, 1935, 107-8).
Newman, clearly an admirer, and remembering the good notice that the military man had bestowed on a previous novel, allows himself the pleasure of a generous sketch. Formally introduced to ‘Hart’, the Captain shows a keen interest in the ‘spy’s’ exploits, especially Newman’s raid on the railway at Lens. ‘I was very struck by the fact that instead of indulging in sentimental rhapsodies’, Newman wrote, that
he immediately got right down to the root-idea underlying the plan I had endeavoured to carry out － that is, the importance of keeping reserves from the field of action, not just for the first hour, but for the first twenty-four hours; and he commented somewhat caustically on the other side of the question － that it is just as essential for the attackers to have all their reserves handy so that they can be used while enemy reserves are missing. (Spy, 108-9)
After this indulgence in strategical by-play, Newman readily declared: ‘I took to this man at once’, and was clearly pleased to be the recipient of an expert lesson in military thinking.
It was obvious that his cranial make-up did not belie the truth, for he seemed to me to be literally bulging with brain. It was delightful to listen to him. I had been mingling for some months with Staff officers and highly placed generals who were thinking hard over problems involving the capture of a few square yards of ground, and who seemed to be incapable of thinking further than a couple of miles behind the German line. But here was a man who saw the war in perspective － as he explained things to me, it seemed that for the first time I saw the war as a whole and not as a mere side-show. I made lots of mental notes as he talked, determined to ponder at leisure over the ideas he suggested. Sometimes he quoted from military authorities, but more often he was expanding his own ideas. (Spy, 109).
As with his earlier The Cavalry Went Through, Newman’s spy novels were thoroughly researched and convincing; such, that they initiated a lively debate about their authenticity, To help impress on readers their ‘genuineness’, Newman cited much historical material. In German Spy (1936) Newman has Grein his protagonist refer to Liddell Hart’s History of the World War (originally published as The Real War (1914–1918) (1930)) as ‘the best history of the war yet written’. Clearly the view of Newman. Furthermore, Newman cleverly uses material from the History of the World War for his own narrative of a German spy. A rather confused incident around St. Quentin during the final great German offensive early in 1918 as reported by Liddell Hart, is imaginatively explained by the author as the actions of the enemy agent, Grein: Newman, here, able to show off his historical prowess, his narrative inventiveness, and put in a further plug for his friend.
Newman enjoyed a long and busy career as a civil servant, author, lecturer and broadcaster. When he died in 1968 (from a wound sustained during the First World War), he attracted the usual obituaries devoted to a successful man. One in particular is worth noting, it appearing in the form of a letter to The Times, essentially an addendum to the notices that had already been printed. It was signed by Sir Basil Liddell Hart and is worth quoting at length, both for the perspective it provides on the intellectual relationship between the two men, and for its confirmation of the surprising influence Newman had on Liddell Hart. The piece, titled ‘Writer on Strategy’, commences with a generous appraisal of Newman’s contribution to military thinking.
Your obituary, and others, of Bernard Newman all speak of him as a writer of books on spies and travel. I would like to pay tribute to his work of another kind in which he attained still more distinction, although it may be forgotten now. The second of the many books he wrote, which was published in 1930, bore the title The Cavalry Went Through, and it came to me to review. It was a striking and very thoughtful study, in fiction form, of what might have happened, and could have been done, in the 1918-18 War if the higher command had shown more imagination and originality, of planning and training, in their efforts to break the trench deadlock and enable “the cavalry to go through” ̶̶－ as was the constant cry, too often merely the parrot-cry, of that war. His detailed ideas were so good, as well as vividly conveyed, and had such a clear bearing on the future, that I mentioned this book of his in several of my own, and have ever since put it on successive lists of recommended reading for military students. (The Times, 27 February, 1968, 10)
Liddell Hart considered The Cavalry Went Through, alongside Ernest Swinton’s Defence of Duffer’s Drift (1904), John Buchan’s Courts of the Morning (1929), and C.E. Montague’s Right Off the Map, as the topmost works of fiction ‘that seemed to me of great value for military education’.
Liddell Hart then gave some interesting comments on Newman’s first novel of spy fiction.
Five years later in 1935, Bernard Newman brought out his better-known book Spy, another work of fiction, which was a subtle psychological study of Ludendorff’s nervous collapse in September 1918. It was based on my account of that episode, along with a maxim of mine that the mind of the enemy commander is the basic target in war, and it purported to relate how a British officer had infiltrated into Ludendorff’s staff and played demoralizingly on his mind. As it cited my maxim, and conveyed that I had uttered it in the narrator’s presence, the publishers submitted the proofs of the book to me. When the review copies were sent out I had just gone to Cornwall, and there was bombarded by press inquiries as to whether and how far it was a matter of fact, as they tended to imagine.
In an important sense, though, Liddell Hart had been disappointed by the popularity of Spy. ‘This book’, he asserted, ‘had such a wide success that it may have impelled Bernard Newman to pursue his later course as a specialist in espionage’. In the final accounting, for Liddell Hart it was ‘a matter of regret that [Newman] did not pursue his studies and writings on tactics and strategy, for which he had shown such remarkable gifts’.
The Catalogue of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives lists the following entries relating to Bernard Newman:
Daily Telegraph review, 10 Feb 1930, of The Cavalry Went Through, by Bernard Newman (LIDDELL HART 10/1930/15)
Daily Telegraph review, 11 Feb 1930, of Adventure, by Major General John Seely (LIDDELL HART 10/1930/16)
Page proof text of Spy, by Bernard Newman, 1935 (LIDDELL HART 15/7/38)
Page proof text of Speaking from Memory, by Bernard Newman, 1959 (LIDDELL HART 15/7/39)
Correspondence with writer Bernard Newman, 1931-1968, with related papers, 1930-1970 (LIDDELL HART 1/543)
Notes and copy correspondence, 1938-1963, compiled in research for Liddell Hart’s memoirs [including] to Bernard Newman, 9 Nov 1959, on service on the Somme, 1916 with 9 King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (LIDDELL HART 13/30/1)
Papers, [1944-1951], relating to German V1 flying bombs and V2 rocket bombs [including] script of a BBC radio programme on V weapons by Bernard Newman, ‘A Secret War’ from the ‘Now it can be told’ series, broadcast in Feb 1951 (LIDDELL HART 15/15/59)
Page proof text of The Blue Ants, by Bernard Newman, 1962 (LIDDELL HART 15/7/40)
Press cuttings about Liddell Hart, 1965-1970 [including] Order of service for funeral of Bernard Newman, author, at St Bride’s, Fleet Street, London, on 29 March, 1968 (LIDDELL HART 13/25)
‘Preface’, Nov 1968, for a history of the British secret service by Bernard Newman (LIDDELL HART 10/1968/10)
Papers, 1925-[1935], relating to domestic and military policies in the Balkan nations [including] typescript account ‘Some notes on Danube frontier conditions’ by Bernard Newman of London, based on his journey through Yugoslavia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, [1925-1935] (LIDDELL HART 15/3/405)
Letter to the New York Times, 1968, about Bernard Newman’s book, Spy (1935) (LIDDELL HART 6/1968/1)