By James Aitchison

Bestsellers in their day, but forgotten now.  The pioneers of spy fiction, hundreds of them, produced thousands of stories between 1914 and 1939.  Some, like Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, John Buchan’s The Thirty-nine Steps and Eric Ambler’s The Uncommon Danger, became genre-defining classics. 

Most, however, were mediocre at best, condemned by atrocious writing, appallingly incredible plots and racist attitudes.  Yet at the time these authors were as familiar to millions of readers as Ian Fleming, Len Deighton and John le Carré are today.

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Arthur Henry “Sarsfield” Ward (1883-1959), better known asSax Rohmer, was the son of Irish working class parents in Birmingham.  His career took many twists and turns: a civil servant, poet, songwriter, comedy sketch writer for music hall performers, eventually becoming an author.  His first published work appeared in 1903, a story titled The Mysterious Mummy.

In 1912 his most famous character first appeared in The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu.  Fu Manchu, with his “green eyes being an emanation of hell”, supposedly led a worldwide conspiracy of the “Yellow Peril”.  His opponent was the good white hero Denis Nayland Smith, controller of the British Secret Service.  It was a case of the Empire versus the East.  Ten books followed.  Rohmer had struck literary gold.

Book sales soared and in 1955 he reportedly sold the film, television and radio rights in his books for more than four million dollars.

From the outset, sociologists and Chinese communities were up in arms at Rohmer’s negative ethnic stereotyping.  One critic wrote that “Rohmer’s own racism was careless and casual, a mere symptom of his times”; another disagreed: “So vehement and repetitive were Sax Rohmer’s references to Asiatic-plotting against ‘white’ civilisation that they cannot be explained simply as the frills of melodramatic narration”.

As critic Donald McCormick argued, “Fu Manchu gradually became a symbol, not of success, but an awful warning to prospective thriller and spy story writers of what to avoid if their works were to have any credibility or quality”.

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Sapper was the pseudonym of Herman Cyril McNeile (1888-1937), who retired from the Royal Engineers — commonly known as “sappers” — at the end of World War I and started writing books.  Then, with a nod to the iconic British bulldog, he created his character Bulldog Drummond, the epitome of British bravery and — seen through today’s lens — British arrogance. 

Drummond was “a clean-limbed young Englishman”, a World War I veteran, who places an ad in The Times:

“Demobilised officer, finding peace incredibly tedious,
would welcome diversion.  Legitimate, if possible;
but crime, if of a comparably humorous description,
no objection.  Excitement essential.”

Such a literary device, used today, would be laughable.  But we must remember that the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton placed an advertisement in 1914 seeking crew for his Antarctic expedition:

“Men wanted for hazardous journey.
Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness.
Safe return doubtful.  Honour and recognition in event of success.”

By advertising his services, Drummond becomes a gentleman adventurer, one of that class of English hero who was “patriotic, loyal, and physically and morally intrepid”, ready to battle any fiendish “Hun”, “Wog”, or “Dago”.  Despite the fact (or perhaps because) his characters spoke in stilted clichés and espoused right-wing, racist and antisemitic views, Bulldog Drummond did not offend his readers.  For fifteen years he was a household word, defending all lovely young Englishwomen as “purity personified”.

McNeile imbued his hero with every conceivable wartime skill: “he could move over ground without a single blade of grass rustling” and “could kill a man with his bare hands in a second”.  He was adept at boxing and jujutsu, was a crack shot, and most importantly played cricket!  (He was also an aspirational figure who owned a Rolls-Royce and a Bentley.)

McNeile’s character drew upon such literary icons as Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake, Richard Hannay and The Scarlet Pimpernel.  In turn, Drummond reportedly inspired James Bond. 

Described as “large, very strong, an apparently brainless hunk of a man”, arguably the wheel has spun full turn.  Jack Reacher and other contemporary heroes played by Arnold Schwarzenegger would comfortably fit this description.

By the end of World War II, characters such as Bulldog Drummond fell from fashion.  Changing social attitudes and literary tastes hastened their demise.

E. Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946) once described his writing method: “I create one interesting personality, try to think of some dramatic situation in which he or she might be placed, and use that as the opening of a nebulous chain of events.”  Like many authors of the time, he never worked from an outline.  “My characters would resent it.”

Once dubbed “the greatest Jewish writer since Isaiah” by John Buchan, Oppenheim worked in his father’s leather business for twenty years before a rich uncle bought the leather works and made him a salaried director so he would have economic freedom to write.

He produced more than 100 novels between 1887 and 1943, dictating his novels to a secretary; he once wrote seven books in a single year.  Oppenheim’s characters inhabited “a glamorous world of international intrigue, romance and plushy society galloping along in swift action and suspense”.  His villains were invariably Prussians and anarchists.

Oppenheim’s books were bestsellers.  His fame saw him pictured on the front cover of Time in 1927.  He bought a villa on the French Riviera and a yacht, then a house on the island of Guernsey; during World War II, his arch enemies the Germans captured both.

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William Tufnell Le Queux (1864-1927), of French-English heritage, wrote more than 150 books in the genres of espionage, thriller, mystery and romance.  His pulp fiction spy stories prior to World War I depicted the Germans as enemies intent on invading Britain.  Titles such as The Invasion of 1910 (a million-copy bestseller, translated into 27 languages) and Spies of the Kaiser made Le Queux a very rich man. 

However, during World War I, he became paranoid that German agents were out to get him for “rumbling their schemes”.  He carried a loaded revolver with him wherever he went because his life was threatened by “enemies of the State”.  He was refused police protection, dismissed as “not a person to be taken seriously”.

Le Queux was an inveterate traveller, journeying to the Sahara, Algeria, Morocco, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, France, Germany and even the Arctic.  His spy fiction was fueled by a vivid imagination and melodramatic self-publicity.  He insisted his spy stories were written “to pay his expenses as a freelance member of the British Secret Service”.  He claimed “intimate knowledge of the secret service of continental powers” and was “consulted by the British Government on such matters”.  He also claimed to be Commander of the Orders of St Sava of Serbia, Danilo of Montenegro, the Crown of Italy and the San Marino Order.

Critics have judged his spy fiction as “sheer sensationalism” and “full-blown xenophobia”, lacking the literary qualities of Ernest Childers; one described Le Queux as “fanatically the foreigner who had become more British than the British”.  Nevertheless, Le Queux pioneered the genre for a quarter of a century.

Despite his own French heritage, Le Queux wrote a story in which French agents murder a British lord with an exploding cigar to silence him; his warnings of an imminent French invasion of Britain threatened to ruin their plans!  By 1909 his stories warned of German spies living under cover in Britain, worming vital secrets out of shipyards, arsenals and factories.  His later books were set in Switzerland where he lived.

It is now alleged that Le Queux employed ghostwriters to maintain his profitable output.

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Baroness Orczy — Emma Magdalena Rozália Mariá Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orci (1865-1947) — was born to Hungarian nobility.  Fearing a peasant revolt, the family fled to London in 1880.  There, Emma Orczy met and married Montagu Barstow, an English illustrator.  In 1903, while standing on a platform in the London Underground, she conceived the character that would earn her global fame: The Scarlet Pimpernel. 

Significantly, she had also invented “the hero with a secret identity” in popular culture, the forerunner to Superman, Batman, Zorro and many others. 

At first, she and her husband wrote a play based on the fictional exploits of Sir Percy Blakeney, an indolent British fop who turned into the Scarlet Pimpernel, a quick-thinking escape artist who saved aristocrats from the guillotine during the French Revolution.  The play ran for four years in London’s West End, breaking many stage records.

The Scarlet Pimpernel set many superhero conventions; he disguised himself, had a signature weapon (a sword), and left a calling card — a fiery red, five-petalled flower named pimpernel — whenever and wherever he struck his adversaries.

The play led to a dozen books featuring Blakeney, plus many more mysteries and adventure romances.

During World War I, Orczy founded the White Feather Movement, encouraging women to shame men who did not enlist by giving them a white feather, symbolising their cowardice.

Not surprisingly, she strongly believed in the superiority of the aristocracy.  She staunchly supported British imperialism and militarism.

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By the 1930s, Sydney Horler (1888-1954) had sold two million books.  A former journalist who had worked in Air Intelligence during World War I, Horler specialised in spy fiction and thrillers.  His main hero was “Tiger” Standish, a Bulldog Drummond-ish character.  His Secret Service stories were mostly set in London, Paris, Cannes and the Riviera; they were generally “artificial”, emulating the Oppenheim model. 

Sadly, Horler’s antisemitism, homophobia and prejudices were on full display in his 150 novels.  Foreigners were “wogs” and “stinkers”.  One of his gentleman thieves, Nighthawk, only stole from women he considered sexually immoral and scrawled the word “Wanton” on their pillowcases!  Described as “among the worst” of British pulp writers, his plots were “unbelievable”.  Even Horler himself admitted he gave “Old Man Coincidence’s arm a frightful twist”. 

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Francis Beeding was the pseudonym of British authors John Leslie Palmer (1885-1944) and Hilary St George Saunders (1898-1951); Palmer always wanted to be called Francis, while Saunders once owned a house in the Sussex village of Beeding.  Palmer was a distinguished literary and dramatic critic; Saunders wrote non-fiction about the British war effort and was Librarian of the House of Commons.  As Beeding, Palmer created the characters and dialogue, Saunders concentrated on the narrative and descriptions.

Their spy fiction collaboration began in 1925 with the first of 17 titles featuring Colonel Alastair Granby, DSO, of the British Secret Service.  Altogether they wrote 31 novels in Beeding’s name.

Like most spy novels of the interwar years their work contained patriotic bias.  By 1938 their work reflected the rise of fascism and the possibility of secret weapons being developed by Hitler.

Their co-authored gothic novel The House of Dr Edwardes became the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s film Spellbound.

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Tastes in fiction, especially spy fiction, have changed dramatically since World War II.  Over the years, a new era of gritty realism has emerged, with multi-dimensional characters, superior writing, greater accuracy of detail, more probable plots and higher stakes.

These days, the art of secret intelligence has become, thankfully, a lot more intelligent.