Introduction

Authors: Bernthal, J.C. and Mills, R.

Pages: 1

DOI: 10.4324/9780367855185-1

Abstract:

After the varying degrees of anxiety and ambivalence felt in the United Kingdom regarding Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and annexation of territory in the 1930s, and the disillusionment of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, Great Britain and France declared war against Nazi Germany on 1 September 1939. Following the tensions of the Phoney War between September 1939 and May 1940 (when expected air raids and poison gas attacks on civilians failed to materialize), the Dunkirk evacuations of May 1940, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, and Winston Churchill becoming Prime Minister, the Second World War had settled in for its grim duration when Agatha Christie published her only thriller dealing explicitly with the conflict. N or M? (1941) features bombs, evacuees, fifth columnists, and an English coastline riddled with spies and under threat of invasion, but it was an element of the novel’s comic relief that caused genuine concerns around national security. According to the codebreaker Dilly Knox, the British secret service organization MI5 was so concerned that a minor character in the book, a Major Bletchley, indicated some secret knowledge of the covert intelligence operations at Bletchley Park that they investigated her. Christie is said to have explained later that this was all a misunderstanding, and that, being “stuck at Bletchley [railway] station”, she “found the place so boring that she thought it the ideal name for the tiresome old major” (Smith 32).

Source: Scopus

Introduction

Journal: S&F-SCIENZAEFILOSOFIA IT

Issue: 13

Pages: 1-3

ISSN: 2036-2927

Source: Web of Science (Lite)