THE IRREGULARS: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington. By Jennet Conant. Simon & Schuster. 348 pages. $27.95.
Most American readers know of Roald Dahl as the children's author who wrote Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. But before he took to writing, Dahl was a British spy during World War II, and the United States of America was his target.
Jennet Conant's The Irregulars is a joy to read, but a mystery to figure out. Just what is it? A history of British spy operations in the wartime America, as Simon & Schuster says in promoting the book? An insider's history of Washington during the war? Or a thin biography of the British writer with a big, fat focus on his war years?
It is all of the above, mostly the biography.
The lack of clear definition is no reason to turn away from this book or even to put it down. From the opening pages, this quirky book is very entertaining.
Dahl, a Royal Air Force pilot, was seriously injured early in the war. He returned to the air, but his health failed. Dahl was then assigned to Washington as an air attache in the British embassy. A big part of his job was to work on an international treaty that would, after the war, regulate which commercial air carriers could fly where. Pretty boring stuff.
But Dahl had another mission. He was to infiltrate the highest social and political circles in America, learn as much as he could and report back to London. A Texas oilman and newspaper publisher, Charles Marsh, provided his entree to high society, and Dahl's reports quickly caught the eye of Winston Churchill.
To earn a few extra dollars, Dahl began writing as a side, and one of his children's books caught the fancy of Eleanor Roosevelt.
When Dahl, still only a 20-something junior officer, landed at a Roosevelt family outing in Hyde Park, N.Y., at the invitation of the first lady, her husband saw right through him. In the book's most fascinating chapter, Conant relates how Franklin Delano Roosevelt used Dahl to open what was a frank and unofficial communications channel to Churchill. It's a dizzying tale of one man using another, and it is all wound up in intrigue and deniability.
Dahl was an extremely handsome young man who had his fun with some of America's richest and most beautiful women. That's not a chapter for the kids to read, but it certainly shows that the international cross-pollination wasn't restricted to American GIs dating British women.
Then there is the intrigue involved with the dumping of Vice President Henry Wallace, FDR's third-term veep, from the 1944 re-election ticket. Somehow it fits in, but, as with many chapters in The Irregulars, it leaves you wondering just what this book is about.
Consider this book not as an espionage history, but as a partial biography of Dahl, who went on to fame, fortune and a long-time marriage to actress Patricia Neal.
This book tells one more story, although Conant never comes out and says she is telling that story. Americans tend to view World War II in terms of the Allies vs. the Axis. But it was more. The three major allies -- the Americans, Britons and Soviets -- were all intent on asserting their own postwar vision on the world. The British sought to keep their empire, and FDR opposed that wholeheartedly. British espionage operations on American soil must be viewed in the context of their efforts to emerge from World War II with their empire intact.
Most historical novels contrive a minor character who conveniently bumps into the major figures of the day just as he is coincidentally stumbling onto the most important events. In The Irregulars, Conant found one such real character in Dahl, and she told his fascinating story.
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