Beschreibung:

Thursday 1st March [1945] Went with Their Majesties to see Top Selbourne’s secret exhibition of S.O.E. appliances in the South Kensington Natural History Museum; this was so interesting that the visit, estimated at forty-five minutes, lasted one and a half hours. We saw a great diversity of death-dealing devices, as used by the Maquis, paratroops, commandos, etc., and some very ingenious methods of communication. I had a special interest in it all, as I saw the birth of S.O.E. from MI (R), the department of the War Office in which I was a voluntary worker during the summer of 1940.’ From King’s Counsellor - Abdication and War: the Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles (edited by Duff Hart-Davis, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006) An important wartime visitor’s book from the secret exhibition of Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) weapons and appliances held at the Natural History Museum in 1945, an exhibition visited by the Royal Family and hundreds of personalities from the world of clandestine warfare dark green leather binding with gilt decoration to cover and page ends, 195mm. by 250mm., 28pp. of the book bearing a total of several hundred visitor signatures from the period March to December 1945, the majority of them - Their Majesties visit aside - under the page headings ‘Date’, ‘Name (Block Letters)’, ‘Station’ and ‘Signature’. Footnote Accordingly a document with considerable “cloak and dagger” personality and unit research potential, with representatives from wide variety of clandestine departments, including: Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) Inter-Services Research Bureau (I.S.R.B.); Military Operations 1, Special Plans (M.O. 1 (S.P.)); Stations VII, IX, XII and XV, the latter being the Thatched Barn at Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, a camouflage centre where agents often received their final equipment before going into the Field; Training School S.T.S. 41 (at Gumley Hall, Market Harborough); Special Operations, Mediterranean (S.O. (M.)); and Far East, Force 136 Military Intelligence M.I. 2, M.I. 3, M.I. 5 and M.I. 6, the former two covering the U.S.S.R., Baltic States and Scandinavia And representatives from the: Admiralty Air Ministry Cabinet War Room Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department (P.I.D.) American Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) the first page signed and dated by the King and Queen, ‘George R.I., March 1st 1945’ and ‘Elizabeth R., March 1st 1945’, as per the visit described by Sir Alan Lascelles, together with a further 44 signatures from the same occasion, among them those of “Top” Selbourne, the Minister of Economic Warfare; Major-General Colin Gubbins, D.S.O., M.C., Chief of S.O.E.; H. N. Sporborg, Vice-Chief of S.O.E.; M. P. Murray, Deputy Chief of S.O.E.; Air Commodore A. R. Boyle, C.M.G., O.B.E., M.C., Assistant Chief S.O.E.; Rear-Admiral A. H. Taylor, C.B., O.B.E., ex-officio S.O.E. Naval Director; further senior officers and a dozen or so Army N.C.Os and F.A.N.Ys, most probably ex-instructors with knowledge of the weapons and appliances on display The next entry, dated 23 April, for another part of V.I.Ps, the 10 signatures including those of General H. “Pug” Ismay, Churchill’s Chief of Staff and Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee Thereafter, as evidenced by the following 26pp. of signatures, a constant flow of S.O.E. and other clandestine personnel of all ranks visited the exhibition, right up until the last day of December when M. P. Murray, Deputy Chief of S.O.E., made the final entry in the book; so, too, another royal party: this page signed and dated by Queen Mary, ‘Mary R., 16th Novr. 1945’, and by the Princesses ‘Elizabeth, 16th Nov. 1945’ and ‘Margaret, 16th Nov. 1945’ A random selection from the remaining hundreds of signatories reveals such personalities as Sir George Binney of S.O.E’s Scandinavian section, together with the scientist R. K. Callow (2 May); Ian Pirie, an S.O.E. officer who had escaped from Greece and Crete in 1941 (26 May); S.O