The Saint and the Spy Revisited

(courtesy of Bing Image Creator)

As I typed out that headline, it occurred to me that some readers might expect something about Roger Moore - so for their benefit, I'll insert a suitable photo from my collection to the bottom of this post. But what I really want to talk about is the legend-laden Dorset village of Whitchurch Canonicorum, which I wrote about in A Saint, a Spy and the Holy Grail back in 2014. The Holy Grail doesn't feature in this revisit, but both the Saint and the Spy do - thanks to some intriguing new information supplied by a reader of that earlier post.

When I came back to this blog after its long hiatus, I found the following comment awaiting moderation (fortunately only since January 2023 - a few other comments had been sitting in limbo for much longer than that!):

Bonjour, my name is Bruno Mevel. I used to live in Bridport and was involved in a play in Whitchurch years ago. The play was about the different possibilities as to who was Saint Wite. That play was written by a certain Christopher Dilke, journalist and author. He was also Georgi Markov's father-in-law... the reason why he is buried in Whitchurch. Don't know if this will reach you, if it does and you want some more info here is my mail address...

I didn't actually publish that comment, as I didn't want to give Bruno's email to all the world's spambots, but I did contact him and he very kindly sent me quite a lot of info. But before I get into it, here's a quick reminder of our two protagonists:

• Saint Wite, also known as Saint Candida (from a Latin word meaning "white"), who probably lived in the early middle ages but about whom nothing is really known (though there are several legends and speculative theories). Her remains are interred inside the church of St Candida at Whitchurch Canonicorum - one of only two genuine church shrines to survive the Protestant reformation in England.
   
  
• Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident who worked for the BBC. He wasn't actually a spy, but he was accused of spreading anti-communist propaganda by his former compatriots. One morning in 1978, while he was waiting at a London bus stop on his way to work, some still-unknown assailant shot him in the leg with a sugar-coated ricin pellet fired from a rolled up umbrella (you can't do this with any old umbrella, by the way - you need a specially modified one from the Bulgarian equivalent of Q branch). Markov died a few days later, and he's buried in the churchyard of Whitchurch Canonicorum, with a gravestone inscribed in both English and Cyrillic.

In my earlier post, I said I couldn't find out how Markov came to be buried in a Dorset village churchyard - so that's one thing Bruno has cleared up, with the revelation that Markov was married to someone from that area. As well as expanding on this point, the additional information he sent also revealed a rather roundabout connection between Markov and St Wite herself. Here's a summary of the whole story.

In his comment above, Bruno mentioned that Georgi Markov's father-in-law was an author named Christopher Dilke (1913–87). In his later years Dilke moved to Whitchurch Canonicorum, where he wrote a play called Legends of St Wite for the church's 900th anniversary in July 1980 (I found this mention of it on the church's own website). Bruno happened to share mutual friends with the Dilke family, and Christopher Dilke asked him to perform one of the roles in the play. The plot involved a new Saxon bishop placed in charge of Whitchurch trying to ascertain just who St Wite was. In the process, he asks various people to give their opinions on the matter. Bruno (who is French) played the role of a Breton nobleman, presenting the Breton version of the St Wite legend.

The play was only performed once, inside the church itself. As much as anything, Bruno remembers the costumes they made for themselves, which were copied from the Bayeux tapestry (if you subtract 900 from 1980 and remember your history, you'll see this gets the period pretty much spot-on). Bruno also kept hold of the poster from the event, which was designed by a local artist named Albert Duplock. Here it is:

 Switching over to the Markov story, there's a connection with Christopher Dilke there too, because Markov married Dilke's daughter Annabel in 1975. After Markov's murder three years later, Annabel's mother claimed the Soviet KGB must have supplied the ricin that was used. This was the height of the Cold War, remember, when East-West espionage and intrigue was at its most intense. During Markov's funeral in St Candida's churchyard, the mourners - who included several other Bulgarian defectors - were protected by armed Special Branch officers who mingled discreetly with them.

As for the Roger Moore connection I mentioned - well, there isn't one really, except with my "The Saint and the Spy" title. Moore is best known, of course, for playing the most famous fictional spy of all, James Bond, in the 1970s and 80s, but those of us of a certain age also fondly remember him in the TV adaptation of The Saint, by Leslie Charteris, in the 1960s. In that series, Moore's character drove a distinctive white Volvo P1800 coupe, which I happened to see at the Bristol Classic Car Show in 2017. Here's my photo of it:

 In case you can't decipher the label on the windscreen, here's what it amounts to: This is the original Roger Moore "ST 1" 1962 TV Saint car. It was used in the first series and made its debut in the first episode [...] The registration "ST 1" was only used for filming - actual reg is 71 DXC.

Pound-Shop Forteana

Here are two DVDs I bought for just a pound each (obviously) in a Poundland store last week – The Dyatlov Pass Incident and Skinwalkers. Both movies are based on true events of the Fortean kind. I first heard about Skinwalker Ranch at a talk by Ian Simmons at the Fortean Times Unconvention in October 2004, while the Dyatlov Pass incident made the cover of FT245 in February 2009. Both films were released in 2013, so the fact they’re already being sold at a massive discount suggests that perhaps they’re not very good. In the case of Skinwalkers that’s true – it might have made an enjoyable video game, but as a feature film it’s simply atrocious. On the other hand, The Dyatlov Pass Incident is a brilliant, five-star, film – the best low-budget horror movie I’ve seen in a long time.

Both films take the form of “found footage” following the disappearance of a team that set out to investigate the mystery in question. In the case of Skinwalker Ranch it’s essentially a modern take on the “haunted house” theme – with the usual ghosts, poltergeist phenomena and spectral hounds joined by UFOs, ancient aliens and animal mutilations. In the movie the ranch is being investigated by a group of professional paranormal researchers, and one of the few positive things I can say about it is that the entire cast looks the part (i.e. unattractive social misfits with no discernable personality). Their behaviour is anything but professional, though – the film belongs to the visceral school of horror, with large amounts of screaming and very little in the way of ratiocination.

The Dyatlov Pass Incident is a different matter altogether. To start with, the central mystery is far more intriguing. Instead of a rambling mashup of subjective phenomena occurring over an extended period of time, it’s tightly focused on one specific incident that left real physical evidence (nine dead bodies, to be precise). The aforementioned Fortean Times article, from 2009, began as follows:

The story sounds like something out of a low-budget horror movie: nine young students go on a skiing holiday in Russia’s Ural Mountains but never return. Eventually, their bodies are discovered – five of them frozen to death near their tent, four more bearing mysterious injuries – a smashed head, a missing tongue – buried in the snow some distance away. All, it seems, had fled in sudden terror from their camp in the middle of the night. [...] At the time, seemingly baffled investigators offered the non-explanation that the group had died as a result of “a compelling unknown force” – and then simply closed the case and filed it as “Top Secret”.

The incident took place in February 1959; the FT article coincided with its 50th anniversary. There are several factors that make Dyatlov Pass one of the 20th century’s most intriguing Fortean mysteries. What was the “compelling unknown force” that caused the students such terror? Why did the deaths from hypothermia occur before – not after – the deaths from crushing physical injuries? Why did several of the bodies show signs of radiation damage? What were the mysterious orange lights seen in the sky around the time of the incident? Most intriguingly of all – why did the Soviet military (this was during the Cold War, remember) stamp the case Top Secret and close the area off to civilians?

The film follows a group of American students who attempt to follow in the footsteps of their Russian predecessors – only to suffer the same fate. This is a much more cerebral film than Skinwalkers – with intelligent, educated characters who think things through and don’t do very much screaming at all. It has a strong plot – unexpectedly so for this type of film. The viewer is presented with a number of obvious choices (Was it a UFO encounter? Was it a Yeti-like creature? Was it a natural accident that has morphed into something more sinister through folklore and misinterpretation?)... and then – culminating in one of the most perfect twist endings I’ve ever seen – the movie comes up with a completely different, even more satisfying, explanation of its own. There’s a fine line between whetting the appetite and spoiling the plot, so I’ll just say “Philadelphia Experiment” and leave it at that.

A Saint, a Spy and the Holy Grail

Whitchurch Canonicorum is a small village a few miles west of Bridport in Dorset. At seven syllables, it’s one of the longest place names in England. This may seem a little pretentious, but Whitchurch Canonicorum is no ordinary village. It was founded in Anglo-Saxon times by the most famous Saxon king of all, Alfred the Great, who called it Hwitan Cyrican, meaning “white church”. Nothing remains of the original Saxon church, but the present building – dating from the 12th to 15th century – has more than its fair share of Fortean oddities: the relics of a mediaeval saint, an icon of the Holy Grail, and the grave of one of the most unusual victims of Cold War espionage.

Surprising as it may seem, there are only two places in the country known to contain the mortal remains of a genuine saint. One is Westminster Abbey in London; the other is the church of Saint Candida and Holy Cross in Whitchurch Canonicorum. Candida is the Latin word for “white”, and the saint herself is more often referred to as “Saint Wite”. The only inscription visible on her shrine is a modern one: Hic reqesct reliqe Sce Wite (“Here rest the relics of Saint Wite”) – apparently duplicating the Latin inscription on a lead casket found inside the tomb when it was opened in 1900.

The tomb itself is very plain – some people think that’s why it escaped destruction during the Protestant Reformation, when so many other shrines around the country were destroyed. Its only distinguishing feature is the presence of three yonic-shaped orifices, where people can place prayer cards and other offerings to the saint (“yonic” is the feminine equivalent of phallic – I had to look it up on Google).

With regard to Saint Wite (or Saint Candida) herself, nothing at all seems to be known about her from historical records. According to local legend, however, she was a Saxon wise-woman who was murdered by the Vikings. Whether or not it’s related to the legend, on the outside of the church tower are carvings representing a ship and an axe, which are often said to symbolize the Vikings. Unfortunately the images are so badly weathered they’re difficult to make out, but lower down on the church wall is another, much clearer carving. This depicts a two-handled vessel, traditionally identified as the Holy Grail.

This part of the church dates from the 12th and 13th centuries, when the popularity of the Grail legend was at its height. But although the legend has a Christian theme, it’s not often depicted in church art of the time. So what is it doing here at Whitchurch Canonicorum? If it’s true that Joseph of Arimathea took the Grail to Glastonbury, he may have landed on the Dorset coast and made his way northwards from there. His route may well have taken him through the place that was later to become Whitchurch Canonicorum.

Moving to more recent times, the churchyard contains one gravestone with a bilingual inscription – English on one side, Cyrillic on the other. This is the last resting place of Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian journalist who was murdered in London in bizarre circumstances in 1978. One morning he was waiting at a bus stop on his way to the BBC World Service, where he worked at the time. He felt a stinging sensation in the back of his leg, and turned round to see a man pointing an umbrella at him. Four days later he died from Ricin poisoning. The umbrella had been used to fire a tiny sugar-coated pellet into his leg; when the sugar dissolved it released the deadly chemical into his bloodstream.

Phrases such as “worthy of James Bond” or “like something Q might have dreamed up” are journalistic clichés, but in this case they’re entirely justified. It’s tempting to think that a real-life James Bond discovered that Markov was a communist spy, and a real-life Q devised a foolproof method of eliminating him. But if that had happened, knowing how the British authorities normally operate, they would have botched the whole thing and Georgi Markov would still be alive and well today.

In fact it happened the other way around. Markov was murdered by Bulgarian (or possibly Russian) secret agents, because they discovered he was using his position at the BBC to spread anti-Communist propaganda. And the Communists, being super-efficient and entirely non-decadent, didn’t botch anything. Georgi Markov died, and his umbrella-wielding assassin was never caught.

I’m not sure why Markov ended up buried in a Dorset village churchyard, though.

Conspiracy History

Conspiracy History is the title of my latest book, which was published by Bretwalda Books last month. As the name suggests, it’s all about historical conspiracies – a subject that is usually ignored by conspiracy theorists. It shouldn’t be, though, because it really helps their case. The more you look at history, the more you realize that conspiracies are an inseparable part of human nature.

I started thinking along these lines a year ago, around the time of the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination. There were a lot of articles in the mainstream media about all the associated conspiracy theories, mostly of a sneeringly skeptical nature. The question they never seemed to ask themselves was: “Are there historical precedents for the kinds of scenario proposed by the conspiracy theorists?” When I looked into it, I discovered there were plenty – from the assassinations of Philip II of Macedon and Conrad of Jerusalem to those of Henri IV of France and Abraham Lincoln. Speculation that those powerful individuals were actually killed by members of “the establishment”, rather than by “enemies of the state”, have been around since day one. And it was a similar story when I looked at other types of conspiracy theory. For every seemingly wild suggestion on the internet today, you can find numerous historical precedents.

I tried the idea on Rupert Matthews at Bretwalda Books, and he liked it enough to take the book on. The result, a year later, is Conspiracy History: A History of the World for Conspiracy Theorists. To whet your appetite, here is the table of contents:

• Chapter 1: A brief introduction to conspiracy theories
• Chapter 2: False flag incidents
• Chapter 3: They acted alone – or did they?
• Chapter 4: Hidden agendas
• Chapter 5: Convenient deaths
• Chapter 6: Secret identities
• Chapter 7: The Illuminati and others
• Chapter 8: Rewriting history

The book includes a preface written by Nick Redfern, one of the most intelligent authors currently working in the conspiracy field. I’m really grateful to Nick for doing this, and for the very favourable review of the book he wrote for Mysterious Universe. Nick lives in Dallas, Texas – which of course was the scene of that most famous of all conspiracies, the JFK assassination. But Dallas has another claim to fame, especially for people of my generation – the eponymous TV series about the machinations of a bunch of greedy Texas oil entrepreneurs.

The original series of Dallas ran for 14 seasons from 1978 to 1991, and at its peak it was one of the most popular TV shows in the world. A couple of years ago it was resurrected for a new series, the third season of which is currently nearing its end in the UK (it’s already finished in the US). The first two seasons were a bit iffy, but this third one is as near to perfection as TV drama gets, and a worthy successor to the Dallas of the 1980s. One of the remarkable things about the original series – the thing that kept people watching week after week – was the fact that almost every character was a scheming, Machiavellian psychopath, prepared to go to extraordinarily devious lengths in order to get what they wanted. The new series is pretty much the same, except that you can now delete the word “almost”. Even Bobby Ewing is a scheming slimeball these days.

Of course Dallas is fiction, and it exaggerates reality. But few people would disagree with the basic principle – to be successful in business you have to break the rules and get away with it. So why is it so far-fetched to assume that governments – the successful ones, at any rate – operate on exactly the same principle? Even stranger, people only have difficulty with this view when they’re talking about current affairs. There’s nothing controversial about conspiracies if you’re talking about the Soviet Union of Stalin’s time, or the British Empire of Queen Victoria’s time, or the Florentine Republic of Machiavelli’s time.

And that’s why everyone needs to read Conspiracy History.

Cold War collaboration

 The MiG-15 was the first really successful jet fighter, responsible for the shooting-down of more than a thousand United Nations aircraft during the Korean War. Built in huge numbers during the late 1940s and early 1950s, MiG-15s were flown not only by the Soviet Union, but by all its allies (the example pictured above, at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton, is shown in North Korean colours). In the English-speaking world, the word "MiG" became synonymous with "enemy aircraft"... and remained so for the duration of the Cold War.

The success of the MiG-15 was due to the combination of a first-class airframe, designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich Bureau of Moscow, with a first-class engine, designed by the Rolls-Royce company of Derby, England. "Hold on a second!" you cry -- "The MiG-15 had an engine designed in England? Did those pesky Russians steal a British engine and reverse engineer it in Moscow? Or did some Guardian-reading pinko Oxbridge spy sell them the secret plans?" Well, neither, actually. The British government gave the Soviet Union a copy of a Rolls-Royce Nene turbojet, complete with permission to produce it under licence, as a good-will gesture in 1946.

At that time the Russians were lagging a long way behind the West in jet technology, so the Soviet leader, who was called Stalin, asked the British Prime Minister, who was called Clement Attlee, if they could borrow one of ours. Stalin was just trying it on -- he never seriously expected to be given an engine just like that, but Attlee was so overawed he let him have one anyway. Which probably explains why you've heard of Stalin but you've never heard of Attlee.

But maybe Attlee wasn't such a fool after all... maybe he knew exactly what he was doing. In 1974, still in the midst of the Cold War, John Brunner wrote a short story called "The Protocols of the Elders of Britain" in which a computer engineer succeeds in decrypting an archive of Top Secret messages sent between the British government and its counterparts all over the world -- not just friendly countries, but so-called "enemies" as well. It turns out they are all conspiring together to make the world a volatile and unstable place... something that Clement Attlee certainly did when he gave Stalin the secrets of the jet engine!

Hyperbolic Orbit

On 5 May 1961, as the result of a short trip on the end of a rocket, Alan Shepard became an instant celebrity and one of the greatest American heroes of the twentieth century. But was he really the first American in space? Personally I think it's an exaggeration to claim this... a Myth-conception created by a mixture of Cold War politics and the media's ignorance of science. If you're going to talk about space travel, you need at least a basic understanding of Newton's Law of Gravitation.

Shepard's trajectory in May 1961 was parabolic, the same as a ball thrown into the air, or any other object which is launched upwards with less than orbital velocity V_o. To enter Earth orbit (as Yuri Gagarin's Vostok spacecraft did three weeks before Shepard's flight), the trajectory must be an ellipse, which requires the speed to be somewhere between V_o and escape velocity V_E = √2V_o. If the speed is greater than V_E the object will escape the Earth altogether on a hyperbolic orbit.

The adjective "hyperbolic" can also mean "of exaggerated importance" (from the noun hyperbole, normally shortened to hype). In this sense, Alan Shepard's flight was hyperbolic as well as parabolic!

I don't mean to belittle Shepard personally -- after all, he was just doing a job, and had no control over how that job was presented to the world by NASA or the news media. Arguably, his flight required far more courage than Gagarin's had, since the latter had the benefit of a well-designed, well-engineered spacecraft that virtually flew itself, and was always well within its operational envelope. Soviet cosmonauts were never bothered by Shepard's oft-quoted worry that "every component was built by the lowest bidder"!

The Redstone rocket used for Shepard's mission (and Gus Grissom's similar flight a couple of months later) was designed in the early 1950s as a short-range ballistic missile, and was (in engineering terms if not in visual appearance) only a slight modification on the German V-2 rocket of World War 2. Test flights of captured V-2s in the late 1940s achieved similar altitudes to Shepard's flight, yet no-one at the time described them as "flights into space". Some of these flights even carried monkeys and other animals as passengers, with no great media fanfare. Under normal circumstances, I'm sure that Alan Shepard's mission would have been seen as "just another test flight"... if it hadn't been for the exigencies of Cold War politics, which demanded an instant U.S. response to Gagarin's flight into space!

Eventually, in February 1962, an American did make it into orbit: John Glenn, boosted into space by an Atlas rocket which was far more powerful than the Redstone. As a space-obsessed but scientifically ignorant schoolboy in the 1960s (from which period the postcard above dates), Alan Shepard was one of my great heroes, and I could never understand why grown-ups made such a fuss about John Glenn... after all, he was only the third American in space, wasn't he? And if the Americans really believed that Alan Shepard's flight was on a par with Gagarin's, they wouldn't have made a fuss about John Glenn either!