David Irving
explains TWENTY years ago, while researching for my
Churchill biography, I worked in archived old files
of the former US Embassy in London (NA Record Group
84 at the Federal Records Center, Suitland,
Maryland), a real treasure-trove of materials that
were still held closed in the British archives. I
came across letters on the printed letterhead "P.O.
Box 500, Whitehall, London SW1" addressed to the
ambassador Joseph P Kennedy -- one of my
favourite characters in history -- or his successor
John G Winant and his staff, or to First
Secretary Herschel Johnson; the letters were
often signed "Guy Liddell." Liddell was a senior officer in the British
security service, MI5. Some of the items he
enclosed were of great historical interest, like
censorship files on British morale, highly detailed
instructions on how mail could be secretly opened
for censorship, and the complete British MI5 file
on American embassy code clerk Tyler Gatewood
Kent (subsequently withdrawn from public view,
but not before I had obtained a complete copy; I am
glad to say I recently persuaded Boston University
library to acquire the late Tyler Kent's
papers).   Tyler
Kent mugshots: US National Archives, RG.59,
1940-44, Central Decimal File. In 1939-1940 Tyler Kent, shocked at what was
going on, copied the clandestine messages passing
between Winston Churchill, then only a
British Cabinet minister, and U.S. President
Franklin D Roosevelt, and turned them over
to anti-war factions in the Conservative Party in
London, including Captain Ramsey and Anna
Wolkoff. For his sins, he was arrested (with
them) on Churchill's orders on about May 20, 1940,
ten days after Churchill came to power, and put on
trial at the Old Bailey -- after Roosevelt had
helpfully stripped him of diplomatic immunity,
thereby ensuring that the trial could be conducted
on the far side of the Atlantic, under wartime
British rules of secrecy. Those P O Box 500 letters were obviously a front
for a British secret agency, and as said most were
signed by a "Guy Liddell" (although some were also
signed by the later Lord Rothschild). 
LIDDELL's own war diaries have now been deposited
in the British national archives (the Public Record
Office) and opened to the public domain. They are
helpfully typewritten, day by day, and even more
helpfully each binder has a typewritten name-index
prepared perhaps by Liddell himself.
UK publishers Routledge Ltd will shortly publish
in England a first volume of excerpts covering
1939-42, selected, edited, and annotated by
Rupert Allason under his nom de plume
Nigel West, and I can think of few British
writers on Intelligence matters better suited for
the task; a second volume is due out later in the
summer of 2005. I have no idea what selection Nigel
West has made. During several months locked in a room with the
diaries, one volume at a time, in the spring of
2003 I made my own selection for my third volume on
Churchill, "Churchill's War", vol. iii: "The
Sundered Dream", and for subsequent revisions and
additions to the earlier two volumes, and I will
certainly have sliced the archival cake differently
from Nigel West. During those months I transcribed what seemed to
me the most important threads of information in
them -- i.e. those that interested me at the
Cabinet level, while keeping an eye open on their
"Himmler" and "Schellenberg" content as well. I
make no apologies for omissions. Those keen to do
their own research can download the entire Liddell
Diaries off the PRO website, for a fee. But those
are vast image-files, not machine-readable
files.  They
are richly rewarding but also sometimes
disappointing, as genuine diaries usually are.
There are countless references to Anthony
Blunt, Kim Philby and other Soviet
agents. We will search in vain for revealing
references to Hitler's own traitorous Intelligence
chief Vice-Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,
right; but there is one reference to
suspicions that "Kanaris" is betraying Germany to
the Soviet Union.
As a service to historians I post these
selection here now, divided into six annual files,
1940 to 1945. Some years still need transcription
work done on them. One entire section of my
transcript is inexplicably missing, -- sorry -- and
I shall have to re-do the work there. These things
happen. These PDF files have the advantage that
they are machine-searchable (to facilitate which I
have not used ligatures and other typographical
embellishments which might tend to thwart "search"
functions). As usual I welcome input from other researchers,
and suggestions for annotations and corrections. I
will also be grateful to researchers who can in the
same communal spirit of Internet potlatch
supply high- or low resolution scans of photographs
of Guy Liddell or his staff and of the agents
referred to in the diaries' pages, and I will post
them to this website as I receive them. [Click
to contact me: 
] Remember, these are my own typed copies; I have
made some expansions of
abbreviations, and I have no doubt also
committed a number of copying errors of the kind
that certain historians will pounce on as proof of
deliberate distortions. But all in all these files
should serve as a useful tool for other real
historians -- and even for the lazy conformists who
wish to sneak-peek at them too. - upport
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David Irving