Continued from Part
1
[endnotes
not yet keyed into text] By early December 1967 the first proof
copies of the Cassell's book had been
printed. Some fell into illicit hands.
Soon, others were campaigning to have the
book suppressed. In the early draft I had
called attention to a dozen factual errors
about PQ.17 in Captain Roskill's
War at Sea.
(I later recognised that it would be
churlish to criticise such a magnificent
work of history over minor details, and
struck them from the manuscript). This
charity was misplaced, for he now entered
correspondence with Broome and Mr
Godfrey Winn. The reason for the latter's antipathy
was not unknown to me. At a luncheon at
the Connaught Rooms on 28 December, I
spoke to a hundred of Cassell's sales
representatives. Off the cuff I referred
to the roles played in convoy PQ.17 by Mr
Godfrey Winn, and Captain Lawford's
anti-aircraft ship Pozarica aboard which
he was a guest. Let nobody diminish the stature of
those brave men who sailed on this
operation. Winn subsequently wrote a
best-seller on PQ. 17 which is still
[1970] in print having sold a
quarter-million copies. But Mr Winn's
shipmates did not themselves view his
participation in the same flattering light
as he did. In North Russia, one lieutenant
wrote in his diary that they asked Winn
[a famous homosexual] how he had
liked being Lawford's guest. Winn had
replied, stated the lieutenant's diary:
"Captains are heavenly, but admirals make
me shy...!" Winn found this quotation in the book,
of which he had obtained an unauthorised
proof copy, and from Captain Roskill, who
had for ten guineas written the "stinking"
report on the draft
The Knight's
Move for Kimber at my suggestion
and at the latter's commission. Winn
secured a copy of that colourful document
(although Roskill consulted neither Kimber
nor myself in parting with the
confidential document). Roskill prophesied
in his report that Mr Irving would no
doubt be "too vain" to accept criticism;
but that was in fact the very object of my
submitting the book to the official
historian for his view. Indeed, Roskill went further: on 9
February 1968 he wrote to Winn, "I am more
than sorry, indeed deeply distressed that
people like you and Lawford should be put
to all this trouble, but in view of the
history of the book and the character of
its author I am quite sure there is
nothing to be done except take him to
Court." All this time, Roskill maintained
a cordial correspondence with me,
commiserating with me on one occasion for
example, "I am afraid Jackie Broome is
rather a difficult character and is
especially prickly about that operation.
That is the only explanation I can suggest
for his uncooperative behaviour. " Godfrey Winn needed no second bidding.
On 12 and 13 February he telephoned
Cassell's directors no fewer than half a
dozen times. How could they, he raged, as
Sir Winston Churchill's publishers
distribute a book like this? "And at a
time like this, when everybody else is
backing Britain, too!" He threatened that
he would "break" Desmond Flower
(Cassell's managing director) for this
awful thing. He summoned Cassell's
directors Kenneth Parker and
Bryan Gentry to his town flat at
Ebury Street at 6 p.m. next day. Over
dinner in my flat later that evening the
directors related all that had transpired
during their two-hour audience with
Godfrey Winn. "Winn," I noted in my diary afterwards,
"is going to issue a Writ against
[The Destruction
of Convoy] PQ. 17 even if he
spends £50,000 doing it. He waved
Roskill's Report on PQ. 17
[The Knight's
Move] at them. . . . Both Winns
claim I 'broke into' their homes and had
to be thrown out (?). "I showed the directors my
files of correspondence with the Winn
brothers and with Roskill, but they had
more to tell."Winn said he intends calling R.
[Lord Justice Winn],
Mountbatten, Rebecca West (?)
into the witness box. My book was a
slur on the Royal Navy. "I pointed out that all its heroes
-- Hamilton, Gradwell and Captain
Owen Morris -- were British
officers." On the very next day, Captain Broome
again wrote to Cassell's threatening legal
action, and on the day after that William
Kimber warned me privately that he knew
from knowledgeable legal circles that
Godfrey Winn was serious. "He has
Roskill's support, and his brother,
Lord Justice Winn, is supporting
his action to the hilt. He is going to
spend his fortune on the operation." The
angle was to destroy me personally, rather
than the book.. On 19 February, 1968 Kimber told me in
alarm that a comment by Lord Justice Winn
himself had now been reported to him. I
noted, "Winn [had said that
he] was going to ruin me. 'With
Irving there can be no compromising'. I
said I didn't know what I had done to
earn such malice." Kimber again urged me most emphatically
to persuade Cassell's to abandon the book
The Destruction of
Convoy PQ. 17 before it was too
late. But Cassell's had already printed
seven thousand copies. I would not hear of
any such concession to intimidation.  RITISH
Justice, supposed to be no respecter of
persons, is in fact heavily weighted
against the young and impecunious. To
decide to go ahead and publish in face of
libel actions is no easy decision. In
libel actions, neither party can claim
legal aid -- the entire cost must be met
from private savings. Solicitors and
counsel's fees can [1970] easily
amount to over ten thousand pounds, and
much of this has to be put up in advance
of any hearing. If it cannot be advanced,
then the action cannot be defended. Like
the size of opposing Armies in battle, the
funds at the command of opposing litigants
are most frequently the determining
element in the action.
The first shot was fired immediately. I
was in the naval archives in Washington
when Winn's former host, Captain Lawford,
by now very old, deaf as a post, and in
failing health, was sent an unauthorised
proof of The
Destruction of Convoy PQ. 17 and
persuaded to take libel action. (Years
before, I had invited Lawford to read the
whole manuscript, but he had excused
himself on grounds of age. Later we
learned that Broome had written
recommending him not to assist in any
way.) The second salvo was fired two weeks
later. A High Court writ was issued by
Captain Broome on 5 March 1968, in respect
of a proof copy he had seen. On the
following day there was a third salvo:
Godfrey Winn's lawyers wrote to Cassell's
demanding the destruction of the book, an
apology and costs; Winn issued a High
Court writ, but it was never served.
Cassell's cabled me, "Godfrey now in
ring." I replied, "For the Winns, Broome
and Lawford it must be quite like old
times: into action with convoy and escort,
to sink the impertinent enemy." In the event, Cassell's disposed of
Lawford's threat ingeniously and without
cost to themselves: Legal though their
method was, it did not commend itself to
me or my lawyers. Without consulting me
they paid a large sum of money to a
charity to quieten him, paid his costs,
and deducted £1,384 from my
royalties. Plans to publish the book went
on as before. Perhaps then I saw how
prophetic had been my thoughts a week
after my very first book, The
Destruction of Dresden, was published.
Kimber had expressed his disappointment at
the delays in the PQ.17 book, and
murmured, "A second book on the Dresden
scale will really establish you as a
writer." "In penury!", a small voice
inside me had said: five years had passed
since then. On my return from Washington, my sister
phoned. She had spotted a remarkable
advertisement in The Daily Telegraph's
personal column appealing for PQ. 17
survivors to write to a Mr Paul
Lund in Cheshire immediately. The outcome was a book on the same
convoy by Lund, published just six months
later, a near-record for a hardback book.
Nothing will sink a book more completely
than another on the identical subject
beating it to the bookstalls. In the event
Lund's book just managed to appear on the
same day; -- I am happy to say that the
reviewers accorded it hardly any
attention. My wife and family thoroughly approved
my plans to defend the book against the
libel actions, although the children found
it hard to understand. Some months
earlier, in a further stage of their
economic education, I had taken them with
me to Fleet Street to show how I handed a
series of articles on the famous
 Dambusters
Raid in to a newspaper office, The Sunday
Express [which serialised them for
three weeks]; I showed my children the
printed result and the price on the
newspapers and I let them see the cheque
when it arrived. When they disbelieved
that this was money, I drove them to my
South Kensington bank and we solemnly
converted the paper into money they could
recognise. If they now understood the bare
economics of an author's existence, the
fact that some stranger could now come and
demand money of me for something I had
written was less easy to explain. "It's
the Law," I volunteered, and evaded the
inevitable questions this new concept
provoked. At no time did Cassell's or I
anticipate that Captain Broome had any
prospect of success. Their natural reflex
on receiving his Writ was to ask Broome
for advice on the errors, and to undertake
to consider amendments; Broome was under
no obligation to give this advice and he
did not do so. Cassell's postponed
publication, planned for early April, by
some months (forfeiting for me a British
newspaper serialisation deal worth many
thousands of pounds). But when their
underwriters' solicitors saw the terms of
Broome's 1942 official report, they could
only conclude that his lawyers were
unaware of this document. They now joined
Kimbers' and myself in the belief that
this document justified what I had
written. Publication was rescheduled for
September. I obtained the services of one of the
most eminent libel experts, Mr Colin
Duncan, Q.C., an excellent orator
rather than a forensic examiner. Silver
haired and advanced in years, he had the
added advantage of offsetting my own youth
[I was then just thirty]. An
atmosphere of confidence pervaded my
meetings with counsel. When Broome's
eleventh-hour claim for punitive damages
(a new concept in libel law) became known,
Colin Duncan averred that no Judge could
allow such a claim to go to the Jury. When
my junior Counsel [Andrew
Pugh] raised with my solicitors
[Rubinstein & Nash] the
possibility of "paying in" say £550,
the latter were adamantly opposed since --
Royal Navy officer and DSO though Broome
was -- he could not believe that even the
most hostile judicial summing up would
procure an award of damages even half as
great. My lawyers did however warn me,
"Although on facts we would appear to
substantiate the matters contained in the
book, the Judge might sum up in a way
which is not in our interest or the Jury
might make a decision on emotional rather
than factual grounds. As you know, it is
possible to lose this case although from a
pure factual point of view we should make
out our Defence." An innocent to the processes of Law, I
found this hard to believe. No payment-in
was made (it would not have helped, as
things turned out.) So certain was I of
Justice and success, that for two years
after receiving Broome's Writ I tried to
insure against the risk of Broome's dying
before the verdict and the Judge's ruling
on the costs. To that extent I had learned
from Kimber's misfortune. Captain Broome was evidently equally
realistic. One newspaper sprang a surprise
interview on him that summer, 1968, and
quoted him in print as saying that he
planned to drop the proceedings, although
he felt the book to be published was
"slanted against England, Churchill, and
the Royal Navy." The reporter read out his
shorthand note over the telephone to me in
Spain. But almost at once Broome denied
the quotation attributed to him.
Subsequent attempts by journalists to
speak to him were cancelled by his
lawyers. Broome's lawyers themselves continued
to cast flies over us. Two weeks before the trial, word
reached Cassell's that a "friend of both
Broome and Cassell's" was anxious to
mediate. Four days before the trial
opened, Broome's leading Counsel, -- this
was Mr. David Hirst Q.C., who,
Kimber had warned me in early 1967, had
been retained by Godfrey Winn for his
abortive action -- privately approached
Cassell's counsel with the cryptic
statement that there were rumours that the
Captain wanted an enormous sum of money to
dispose of the action: "I want you to know
this isn't so at all. If you have any
feelings on the subject, please don't
hesitate to get in touch." By this time of
course six Counsel had been briefed, and
truly majestic costs already incurred. I felt sorry that Broome had become
enmeshed in such a costly dilemma. On 25
January this year [1970] -- the
very evening before the Trial commenced --
I told [Fleet-street editor]
Donald McLachlan, who had come to
tea with us, that I was anxious about
Broome's ability to pay the huge costs
involved: "It would be tragic if he were
to ruin himself over this case." Yet his own lawyers had at one stage
professed to my own dumbfounded
representatives, "Cost is no object in
this case!"" (Their costs alone amounted
to over £23, 000 when the first High
Court action was over.) *  The
Judge hearing the action was the
sixty-year-old Sir Frederick Lawton
(left), son
of a prison governor and educated, like
myself, at a grammar school. Humorous and
erudite, he bared his teeth incongruously
even when making the wittiest observation.
The naval witnesses marched into the box
almost in column of four, in support of
Captain Broome. They were soft-spoken,
mannered and truthful. I particularly
liked Admiral Hayes, Hamilton's
staff officer in the convoy. He quietly
mentioned how a battle-cruiser, Repulse,
had vanished from beneath his feet in six
minutes; it had been attacked by Japanese
torpedo-bombers based on Saigon 400 miles
away. Allied convoys had hitherto been
attacked by enemy aircraft up to 380 miles
from enemy aerodromes. Navigation was to
play an important part in the Trial. Pozarica's Captain Lawford had himself
given evidence earlier in private, but on
balance Broome decided against having it
read to the Jury, and paid the entire cost
himself. Every one of the officers
involved volunteered that the Admiralty's
mistaken report that the German battle
fleet had sailed, and that the consequent
scattering of the convoy, left them
"shattered." I had described Captain
Broome as "a broken man" when he realised
the mistake -- one of the passages found
to be libellous. Captain John Litchfield, a
former cruiser officer whose wordy
opinions I had weighed and eventually
largely discarded as I suspected him of
being too close a friend of Broome to be
entirely objective, voiced his displeasure
at my having done so when he also stood in
the witness box. He, Captain Roskill,
Kimber, and de Salis all testified from
the witness box that in their view the
draft manuscript (as they had read it:
which was before I had seen the 1942
Broome report!) libelled Captain Broome.
Of course, in a normal libel action such
opinions would have been severely enjoined
by the Judge; but the eleventh-hour claim
for "punitive damages" in the PQ. 17 case
made it relevant to enquire whether we,
the defendants had received due
warning. That The
Destruction of Convoy PQ.17 as
published was materially different from
the original draft (in fact 150 pages had
been wholly retyped) was noisily denied by
Broome's Counsel. I cannot criticise the
witnesses for not having recalled the
differences; several years had passed
since then. On this point we were hampered by the
election -- which was very proper at the
time it was made -- of both leading
Defence Counsel to call no witnesses.
Several naval officers had in fact
volunteered to testify on my behalf. Our
Counsel's ruse de guerre benefited us
immeasurably in other ways; they argued
privately that since we rested our Defence
wholly on official war documents already
introduced as agreed evidence, we should
dispense with oral witnesses. In particular, they saw no cause for me
to enter the witness box: I could give
admissible evidence on nothing relating to
our defence of Justification. And while I
could certainly have testified that there
had been no "cold, cynical calculation" to
libel Broome for profit -- the essence of
the historic claim for "punitive damages"
-- here our Counsel intended to submit
that there was no case to answer. (In a
writing career of nine years, I had sold a
total of 19,500 hardback books in England:
my total income from these before tax had
been £3,200. How therefore can an
author deliberately libel somebody,
expecting the profits thereby to be so
large that he can pay any libel damages
and costs awarded against him?) Above all, all the defence Counsel
warned that the most obvious tactic for
the Plaintiff was to make a privileged
assault on my reputation, and that nothing
would facilitate this more than having me,
as was scheduled, for five days in the
witness box. The Plaintiff's case was
certainly intended to cover a broad front.
I myself duly observed how David Hirst had
stacked along the shelf in front of him
copies of every book I had written; and
the documents "discovered" even included
an article I had written on Hitler's
teeth. I was not apprehensive, and on the
last meeting of Counsel half-an-hour
before I was expected to enter the witness
box, I appealed, "If I am to go to the
firing-post, I would at least like my last
words heard." Later, having lost the case,
I saw no reason to criticise my
"generals", and I persuaded myself they
were right.  Endnotes
to Part 3 are not yet keyed in
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