Prince Harry can’t win his war against the media | Royal Insight

Why is Prince Harry suing Mirror Group Newspapers?

Explainer

What’s at stake for Prince Harry as he gives evidence in phone-hacking trial?

 

Duke of Sussex is a part of a 100-strong lawsuit against Mirror Group over allegations of hacking – but his participation is unprecedented for a royal

 

Nimo Omer and Jim Waterson

Mon 5 Jun 2023 07.04 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/05/prince-harry-phone-hacking-trial-whats-at-stake

 

Prince Harry will make another unprecedented move for a senior royal t his week as he gives evidence in a phone-hacking court case against Mirror Group Newspapers, the owner of the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday People. The lawsuit alleges that the company unlawfully gathered information on the prince between 1996 and 2011 that was published in its papers, and that senior executives and editors were aware of this activity. This lawsuit is one of three entirely separate but concurrent phone-hacking claims that Prince Harry is making: the other two are against Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, and the Mail newspapers.

 

While he is one of the most high-profile players in the lawsuit, Harry is not the only claimant. More than 100 other people are suing the Mirror Group, including ex-footballer and TV presenter Ian Wright, Girls Aloud star Cheryl Cole, and the estate of the late singer George Michael. (The Mirror Group has steadfastly denied the allegations, adding that the claimants have waited too long to sue them.)

 

Even so, the prince’s case seems particularly notable; after years of being hounded and splashed across the front pages with humiliating headlines, it seems Harry is committed in his crusade against the media, whom he blames for the death of his mother and his fraught relationship with his family.

 

For today’s newsletter, I spoke to the Guardian media editor, Jim Waterson, about why this case is so significant.

 

Why is Prince Harry giving evidence so significant?

Keeping up with all of Harry’s legal proceedings against the tabloids can be a dizzying affair. But this is different:giving evidence in a court of law deviates significantly from the royal family’s approach to public life. The Duke of Sussex is thought to be the first royal to give evidence in a trial since the late 19th century – and being in the witness box means that he has opened himself up to aggressive cross-examination. (This is not the same as “taking the stand”, Jim points out, an American-ism that does not exist in the British court system.)

 

“The royals have always done their best to keep out of the court system in case it becomes a bit unpalatable and unpleasant for them, and reveals things that they don’t want revealed,” Jim explains. “But Harry has adopted a sort of, ‘I don’t care any more’ attitude.”

 

The risks

There is a lot on the line here for the prince: he could lose a lot of money in legal fees if he has not signed a “no win no fee” agreement with his legal team, and British newspapers will probably pillory him further if the verdict does not come out in his favour. But, like all court cases, this is a “calculated risk” that Harry is taking. “He feels that the British press, particularly the tabloids, have wronged him, his mother and those around him. And he wants to do something,” Jim says. Even if he does not win the court cases, publicly dragging the Mirror group through the courts and forcing them to spend eye-watering sums on lawyers could be a way to make them feel the burn. “The impression I get is that he’s an angry, wounded guy and he can’t take it any more,” Jim says. “He’s willing to take the punches and do this, because he sees this as his way of getting justice.”

 

A loss for Harry could happen in two ways. Firstly, the Mirror Group argues that most of the articles he is pointing to were sourced through tips, so a judge could rule that his phone was not hacked. The fallback defence may be that he simply filed his paperwork too late. The general rule is that victims have six years from a wrongdoing or when they knew about it to start a case in the civil court system, Jim says, “so the judge could say it’s almost irrelevant whether they did it, because you simply missed a deadline”.

 

What if it all pays off?

The best outcome for the prince would be that the court decided that his phone was indeed hacked by the Mirror Group, and that individuals – some of whom still occupy senior positions in the press – were aware that this was happening. Ideally, at least some of these people would be held accountable. A win like this would be a huge blow to the publisher.

 

 For the past seven years, the Mirror Group have been able to settle phone-hacking cases out of court. If the judge rules against Prince Harry, many of the outstanding claims may be dropped and this could draw a line under this messy, expensive, embarrassing and damaging saga for the company.

 

“But if a judge rules in favour, and effectively says a lot of people still don’t know that they’ve been victims, this could roll on for many years to come,” Jim says. The Mirror Group has already paid £100m to settle hundreds of phone-hacking claims and legal fees at its titles over the past decade, during a time when the newspaper business is in a terrible financial state. A big payout, however nice, is unlikely to be the main motivation for Harry, though. “This isn’t just about phone hacking,” he previously said in reference to his case against Murdoch’s papers. “This is about accountability of power”.

And ..., By the Way... This is the Portuguese Monarchistic Tie ...

 

Hip hip hooray ! JEEVES got his CORONATION TIE !

 

The First of the Few / Leslie Howard: The Actor’s Mysterious Fate

 

Leslie Howard: The Actor’s Mysterious Fate on BOAC Flight 777

 

German Junkers Ju-88s shot down actor Leslie Howard’s plane en route from Lisbon to Bristol. The reason remains a mystery.

 

This article appears in: Summer 2010

https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/leslie-howard-the-actors-mysterious-fate-on-boac-flight-777/

 

By Blaine Taylor

 

By June 1, 1943, British actor Leslie Howard, 50, was one of the most famous actors in the world, one of the leading male stars of one the greatest box-office draw movies of all time, the 1939 blockbuster Gone with the Wind.

 

A Hungarian Jew in Hollywood

Born of Hungarian Jewish immigrants as Leslie Howard Stainer in London in 1893, Howard had served as a junior officer in World War I until he was mustered out of military service in 1916 after suffering shell shock in the trenches of France.

 

Becoming an actor as therapy on the advice of his doctor, Howard made his stage debut in 1917, and later earned Academy Award nominations for both the 1933 film Berkeley Square and the 1938 movie Pygmalion. But it was as the star-crossed Confederate lover Ashley Wilkes that he remains best known to this day. His acting career, however, would soon come to a tragic end.

 

In 1940, he left Hollywood and returned to England where he hoped he might be able to do something to help Britain’s war effort. In 1941 and 1942 he starred in several war films including 49th Parallel (1941), Pimpernel Smith (1941), and The First of the Few (called Spitfire in the United States; 1942), the latter two of which he also directed and co-produced.

 

Leslie Howard’s Flight to Lisbon

In April 1943, Howard flew into neutral Lisbon, Portugal, ostensibly to present a series of lectures on his films and on the role of Hamlet, as well as to look after his own film-distribution business affairs on the Iberian Peninsula. However, other reports said that he was in Lisbon for another reason––to rally support for the anti-Fascist cause. As he prepared to fly out of London, however, he told his wife Ruth that he had “a queer feeling about this whole trip, but–what the hell!–you know that I’m a fatalist anyway.”

 

One thing that may have planted the seed of apprehension in his mind was the fact that on April 19, just two weeks earlier, this very same plane in which he was to ride—Ibis—a DC-3 plane operated by the Royal Dutch Airlines, had been oddly and unexpectedly attacked by a flight of from six to eight deadly German Luftwaffe Junkers Ju-88s off Spain’s Cape Corunna. The plane had even taken some hits before escaping to safety in a cloudbank and then continuing on to Portugal.

 

Airport officials were mystified, since both the British BOAC aerial service and the Royal Dutch Airlines had flown entirely undisturbed despite the ongoing air war over the Mediterranean, and at least 5,000 passengers had taken off and landed safely. Until the spring of 1943, there had been a sort of gentlemen’s agreement between the capitals of Lisbon and London to continue the daily flight without hindrance. Thus, despite the freak attack of April 19, the daily flights between Portugal and the United Kingdom resumed.

 

Until June 1, 1943, the Germans had left the Lisbon-to-Free World flights alone, as many of their passengers were useful to the Axis war effort, but that day’s Flight 777 to London was about to be proven the exception.

 

A Case of Mistaken Identity

With his visit concluded, Howard and a dozen or so other passengers boarded the Ibis at Lisbon’s Portella airport at 9:35 am on June 1, 1943, for what was expected to be a routine return flight to London.

 

A nervous Leslie Howard boarded the flight with Arthur Tregear Chenhall, a heavy-set friend and business associate of the famous actor, who somewhat resembled Winston Churchill and who also enjoyed smoking large cigars. (A persistent rumor during and after the war—fueled by the prime minister himself—had it that German agents in Lisbon mistakenly thought Chenhall was Churchill, and thus had planned to target him.)

 

Did Howard have reason to feel unsafe? Maybe so. Having previously played the roles of Professor Henry Higgins in Pygmalian, Romeo to actress Norma Shearer’s Juliet, and Philip Carey in Of Human Bondage, Howard was also known for his famed 1934 role in The Scarlet Pimpernel opposite Merle Oberon. Therein he portrayed an English nobleman secretly helping condemned French aristocrats escape the blade of the guillotine and constantly thwarting his rival, a diabolical secret policeman of Revolutionary France.

 

To aid the Allied war effort and defeat the hated Nazis, Howard reprised this role in the 1941 film, Pimpernel Smith, which was updated to replace French Revolutionaries with the Nazis of the Third Reich as the villains. The actor played Horatio Smith, an archaeology professor traveling in Europe who rescues refugees from the German Gestapo (Secret Police).

 

According to author Jerrold M. Packard in his excellent 1992 study—Neither Friend Nor Foe: The European Neutrals in World War II—“[German] Propaganda Minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels had seen Howard’s 1941 film Pimpernel Smith … [and] decided to get the man who not only starred in this attack on the Reich, but who directed and produced it as well.”

 

Packard noted, “When passing Germans in the lobby of the Ritz … the actor made gentlemanly efforts to conceal his own contempt. He wasn’t aware, of course, that among these Germans were agents reporting his movements back to Berlin.”

 

Other passengers on Flight 777 included Reuters News Service reporter Kenneth Stonehouse; Wilfred Israel, a Jewish relief activist; mining engineer Ivan Sharp, who had been negotiating important tungsten imports for England; Shell Oil Company’s Lisbon manager, Tyrrel Shervington; and two other men, a trio of women, and two or three children.

 

Lawrence Olivier, Anton Walbrook, and Leslie Howard starred in 1941’s Forty-Ninth Parallel. The film tells the story of Nazi naval officers and crew stranded in Canada and their attempts to gain sympathy from the local residents.

Lawrence Olivier, Anton Walbrook, and Leslie Howard starred in 1941’s Forty-Ninth Parallel. The film tells the story of Nazi naval officers and crew stranded in Canada and their attempts to gain sympathy from the local residents.

 

“I Feel Bad About This Air Trip”

Oddly, the only reason that both Howard and Chenhall were able to find seats aboard was because the airline had “bumped” at the last minute two other would-be passengers: nanny Dora Rowe and Derek Partridge, the young son of a Foreign Office official, to make room for the famous actor and his aide.

 

Another who missed the fatal flight was Roman Catholic English College Vice President Father A.S. Holmes. Waiting in the terminal, Father Holmes received a hasty message to call either the British Embassy or the papal nunciature right away. Because the aircraft wouldn’t wait for him, the priest watched it take off from the terminal.

 

Afterward, strangely, no one at the telephone switchboard could verify having received a call for the priest, and both the embassy and the papal office denied making any such request for him to contact them. His last-minute removal from the doomed aircraft thus remains a mystery, one of several.

 

Later, in the wake of what happened, it developed that there had been more odd occurrences before the flight. Shervington had dreamed that the plane had been shot down and that he’d gone down with it, and Stonehouse moaned to a friend before taking off, “I’m not normally frightened, but somehow, I feel bad about this air trip. I wish that I could go to sleep here and wake up at some English airfield.”

 

Were these just the usual “fear of flying” jitters shared by many passengers before and since? Again, maybe not, as it later developed that Berlin not only perceived Howard as an outright wartime Allied propagandist, but also, perhaps, as more than that: as an intelligence agent. The Nazis also viewed Shervington as a fellow spy, and Zionist activist Wilfried Israel as an avowed enemy of Third Reich.

 

Indeed, as the passengers boarded the flight, they were even watched by the crew of a nearby Lufthansa German civilian airliner.

 

Flight 777 Falls From the Sky

The ill-fated Ibis took off and soon reached an altitude of 9,000 feet, setting a course for a landfall at Spain’s Cape Villano before flying out over the Bay of Biscay for the seven-hour flight to Bristol, England. Unknown to the passengers and crew of the Ibis, as they passed Cape Villano, a powerful German omnidirectional radio navigation beam locked on to the Dutch aircraft.

 

Another fact unknown to the doomed passengers and crew aboard Ibis was that, as it took off from Lisbon, a squadron of eight German Junkers Ju-88 crews were also preparing to take off from their Luftwaffe base in German-occupied France near the port city of Bordeaux for a patrol over the Bay of Biscay. Its exact orders were never made known, and it is doubtful that these deadly Ju-88 fighter-bombers were on either air-sea rescue or U-boat protection missions.

 

What is known, however, is that the Ibis and the flight of eight Ju-88s were now flying on intersecting paths. Shortly before 1:00 pm on that clear June day, Flight 777 suddenly was raked by bursts of cannon fire and machine-gun bullets from the attacking Ju-88s over the water some 200 miles northwest of A Coruña, Spain. The DC-3’s wireless operator quickly tapped out a chilling message in Morse code: “From G-AGBB [Ibis’s call sign] … I am followed by unidentified aircraft … I am attacked by enemy aircraft.” After that, the transmission went dead.

 

As during the April 19 assault, the DC-3 again tried unsuccessfully to reach the safety of the clouds, but instead headed for the sea below, trailing a stream of flames. It slammed into the water with great force, killing all on board. After the airliner crashed, the attacking planes photographed bits of smoking wreckage floating on the rough seas and then returned to their home base.

 

“The Inscrutable Workings of Fate”

Three days after the incident, the New York Times reported, “It was believed in London that the Nazi raider[s] had attacked on the outside chance that Prime Minister Winston Churchill might be among the passengers.”

 

Both the British and Portuguese air authorities were shocked when it became known that an armed belligerent had apparently shot down an unarmed, clearly marked civilian airliner in broad daylight. So sure had they been that such an event would never happen—and that the earlier attack of April 19 had been but an accidental aberration—that they had summarily refused to extend the air routes farther out over the Atlantic Ocean as a defensive measure. Nor had they rescheduled the flights to the hours of darkness.

 

When the Allies’ secret Nazi code-breaking capabilities known as Ultra were finally made public decades after World War II ended, it was learned that the British had known in advance of possible German plans to shoot down Flight 777 based on their assumption that Churchill was aboard. To avoid compromising the Ultra secret, the British could not pass on this bit of intelligence to the airline.

 

In his monumental history of the war, Churchill kept alive the mistaken-identity thesis, and referred to Leslie Howard’s death as one of “the inscrutable workings of fate.” (Read about these and other lesser-known events during the Second World War inside WWII History magazine.)

 

 

 The First of the Few (US title Spitfire) is a 1942 British black-and-white biographical film produced and directed by Leslie Howard, who stars as R. J. Mitchell, the designer of the Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft. David Niven co-stars as a Royal Air Force officer and test pilot, a composite character that represents the pilots who flew Mitchell's seaplanes and tested the Spitfire. The film depicts Mitchell's strong work ethic in designing the Spitfire and his death. The film's title alludes to Winston Churchill's speech describing Battle of Britain aircrew, subsequently known as the Few: "Never was so much owed by so many to so few".

 

Leslie Howard's portrayal of Mitchell has a special significance since Howard was killed when the Lisbon-to-London civilian airliner in which he was travelling was shot down by the Luftwaffe on 1 June 1943. His death occurred only days before The First of the Few was released in the United States on 12 June 1943, under the alternate title of Spitfire.

 

A newsreel sets the scene for summer 1940, showing Nazi advances in Europe with Britain facing invasion and aerial attacks on the island increasing. On 15 September 1940, during the Battle of Britain, RAF Squadron Leader Geoffrey Crisp (David Niven), the station commander of a Spitfire squadron, recounts the story of how his friend, R. J. Mitchell (Leslie Howard) designed the Spitfire fighter. His pilots listen as Crisp begins with the 1922 Schneider Trophy competition, where Mitchell began his most important work, designing high speed aircraft. While watching seagulls with his binoculars, he envisages a new shape for aircraft in the future. Crisp, an ex-First World War pilot seeking work, captivates Mitchell with his enthusiasm and the designer promises to hire him as test pilot should his design ever go into production. Facing opposition from official sources, Mitchell succeeds in creating a series of highly successful seaplane racers, eventually winning the Schneider Trophy outright for Great Britain.

 

After a visit to Germany in the 1930s and a chance meeting with leading German aircraft designer Willy Messerschmitt, Mitchell resolves to build the fastest and deadliest fighter aircraft. Convincing Henry Royce of Rolls-Royce that a new engine, eventually to become the famous Rolls-Royce Merlin, is needed, Mitchell gets the powerplant he requires. Faced by the devastating news that he has only one year to live and battling against failing health, Mitchell dies as the first prototype Supermarine Spitfire takes to the skies. Crisp ends his account when the squadron is scrambled to counter a German attack: the fight sees the Germans beaten, with the Luftwaffe losing more planes than the British. In the end, Crisp is happy over the victory and looks to the heavens to Mitchell, voicing a thanks to Mitchell for creating the Spitfire.

 

 

R. J. Mitchell, subject of the biopic

The First of the Few is a British film produced and directed by Leslie Howard, with Howard taking the starring role of aviation engineer and designer R. J. Mitchell. Leslie Howard bore little resemblance to R. J. Mitchell, however, as Mitchell was a large and athletic man. Howard portrayed Mitchell as upper class and mild-mannered. Mitchell – "the Guv'nor" – was in fact working class and had an explosive temper; apprentices were told to watch the colour of his neck and to run if it turned red. Howard himself was well aware of these deliberate artistic discrepancies, and dealt delicately with the family and Mitchell’s colleagues; Mrs. Mitchell and her son Gordon were on the set during much of the production.[1] When told that the "authorities" had come up with the name "Spitfire", Mitchell is reported to have said "Just the sort of bloody silly name they would think of".

 

The film's score was composed by William Walton, who later incorporated major cues into a concert work known as Spitfire Prelude and Fugue.

 

Because The First of the Few was made during the Second World War and dealt with subjects related to the conflict, it was, in effect, propaganda. Because of its value as propaganda, the RAF contributed Spitfire fighters for the production. U.S. producer Samuel Goldwyn allowed Niven to appear in exchange for U.S. rights to the film, which was distributed by RKO Pictures. After seeing the prints, Goldwyn was furious that Niven was cast in a secondary role and personally edited out 40 minutes before reissuing the film as Spitfire.

 

Wing Commander Bunny Currant ("Hunter Leader") Squadron Leader Tony Bartley, Squadron Leader Brian Kingcome, Flying Officer David Fulford, Flight Lieutenant 'Jock' Gillan, Squadron Leader P. J. Howard-Williams and Flight Lieutenant J. C. 'Robbie' Robson are among the pilots and RAF Fighter Command personnel who make uncredited appearances. Some pilots seen in the early sequences did not survive to see the completed film. Jeffrey Quill is the test pilot who flies the Spitfire prototype in the scene demonstrating its ability to climb to 10,000 feet and dive at more than 500 miles per hour.

 

The First of the Few

 

The First of the Few, known as Spitfire in the United States, is a 1942 British film directed by and starring Leslie Howard as R.J. Mitchell, the designer of the Supermarine Spitfire, alongside co-star David Niven. The film's score was written by William Walton ("Spitfire Prelude and Fugue"). The film's title alludes to Winston Churchill's speech describing Battle of Britain aircrew: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

Plot

A newsreel sets the scene for summer 1940, showing Nazi advances in Europe with England facing invasion and aerial attacks on the island increasing. On 15 September 1940, during the Battle of Britain, RAF Squadron Leader Geoffrey Crisp (David Niven), the station commander of a Spitfire squadron, recounts the story of how his friend, R.J. Mitchell (Leslie Howard) designed the Spitfire fighter. His pilots listen as Crisp begins with the 1922 Schneider Trophy competition, where Mitchell began his most important work, designing high speed aircraft. While watching seagulls with his binoculars, he envisages a new shape for aircraft in the future. Crisp, an ex-First World War pilot seeking work, captivates Mitchell with his enthusiasm and the designer promises to hire him as test pilot should his design ever go into production. Facing opposition from official sources, Mitchell succeeds in creating a series of highly successful seaplane racers, eventually winning the Schneider Trophy outright for Great Britain.

After a visit to Germany in the late 1930s and a chance meeting with leading German aircraft designer Willy Messerschmitt, Mitchell resolves to build the fastest and deadliest fighter aircraft. Convincing Henry Royce of Rolls-Royce that a new engine, eventually to become the famous Rolls-Royce Merlin is needed, Mitchell has the powerplant he requires. Faced the devastating news that he has only one year to live and battling against failing health, Mitchell dies as the first prototype Supermarine Spitfire takes to the skies (in fact, Mitchell died over 15 months after the first flight). Crisp ends his account when the squadron is scrambled to counter a German attack, voicing a thanks to Mitchell for creating the Spitfire.

 

Cast

Principal credited cast members (in order of on-screen credits) and roles:

Actor Role

Leslie Howard R.J. Mitchell

David Niven Geoffrey Crisp

Rosamund John Diana Mitchell

Roland Culver Commander Bride

Anne Firth Miss Harper

David Horne Mr. Higgins

J.H. Roberts Sir Robert McLean

Derrick De Marney Squadron Leader Jefferson

Rosalyn Boulter Mabel Lovesay

Herbert Cameron MacPherson

Toni Edgar-Bruce (as Toni Edgar Bruce) Lady Houston

Gordon McLeod Major Buchan

George Skillan Henry Royce

Erik Freund Willy Messerschmitt

Fritz Wendhausen (as F.R. Wendhausen) Von Straben

John Chandos Krantz

Victor Beaumont Von Crantz

Suzanne Clair Madeleine

Filippo Del Giudice Bertorelli

Brefni O'Rorke The Specialist

 

Production

The First of the Few was a British film produced and directed by Leslie Howard, with Howard taking the starring role of R.J. Mitchell. Leslie Howard bore little resemblance to R. J. Mitchell, however, as Mitchell was a large and athletic man. Howard portrayed Mitchell as upper class and mild-mannered. Mitchell - "the Guv'nor" - was in fact working class and had an explosive temper; apprentices were told to watch the colour of his neck and to run if it turned red. Howard himself was well aware of these deliberate artistic discrepancies, and dealt delicately with the family and Mitchell’s colleagues; Mrs. Mitchell and her son Gordon were on the set during much of the production.

Because the film was made during the Second World War and dealt with subjects related to the conflict, it was, in effect, propaganda. Because of its value as propaganda, the RAF contributed Spitfire fighters for the production. US producer Samuel Goldwyn released Niven who was still under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, allowing him to appear in exchange for US distribution rights. After seeing the prints, Goldwyn was furious that Niven was cast in a secondary role and personally edited out 40 minutes before reissuing the film as Spitfire.

A great Gentleman ... Tragic heroic death ...

Theories surrounding Howard's death
A long-standing hypothesis states that the Germans believed that UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had been in Algiers, was on board the flight. Churchill himself can be blamed for the spread of the theory; in his autobiography, he expresses sorrow that a mistake about his activities might have cost Howard his life.[28] In the BBC television series Churchill‘s Bodyguard (original broadcast 2006), it is suggested that (Abwehr) German intelligence agents were in contact with members of the merchant navy in Britain and had been informed of Churchill’s departure and route. German spies watching the airfields of neutral countries may have mistaken Howard and his manager, as they boarded their aircraft, for Churchill and his bodyguard. Howard's manager Alfred Chenhalls physically resembled Churchill, while Howard was tall and thin, like Churchill's bodyguard, Detective Inspector Walter H. Thompson. Churchill’s Bodyguard noted that Thompson had written that Churchill at times seemed clairvoyant about suspected threats to his safety and, acting on a premonition, he changed his departure to the following day. The crux of the theory posited that Churchill had asked one of his men to tamper with an engine on his aircraft, giving him an excuse not to travel at that time. Speculation by historians has also centred on whether the British code breakers had decrypted several top secret Enigma messages that detailed the assassination plan. Churchill wanted to protect any information that had been uncovered by the code breakers so that the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht would not suspect that their Enigma machines were compromised. Although the overwhelming majority of published documentation of the case, repudiates this theory, it remains a possibility. Coincidentally, the timing of Howard's takeoff and the flight path was similar to Churchill's, making it easy for the Germans to mistake the two flights.

Two books focusing on the final flight, Flight 777 (Ian Colvin, 1957), and In Search of My Father: A Portrait of Leslie Howard (Ronald Howard, 1984), concluded that the Germans shot down Howard's DC-3 for the specific purpose of killing him.[14] Howard had been travelling through Spain and Portugal, ostensibly lecturing on film, but also meeting with local propagandists and shoring up support for the Allied cause. The Germans in all probability suspected even more surreptitious activities since German agents were active throughout Spain and Portugal, which, like Switzerland, was a crossroads for persons from both sides, but even more accessible to Allied citizens. James Oglethorpe, a British historian specialising in the Second World War, has investigated Howard's connection to the secret services. Ronald Howard's book explores in great detail written German orders to the Ju 88 Staffel based in France, assigned to intercept the aircraft, as well as communiqués on the British side that verify intelligence reports of the time indicating a deliberate attack on Howard. These accounts also indicate that the Germans were aware of Churchill's whereabouts at the time and were not so naïve as to believe he would be travelling alone on board an unescorted and unarmed civilian aircraft, which Churchill also acknowledged as improbable. Howard and Chenhalls were not originally booked on the flight, and used their priority status to have passengers removed from the fully booked airliner.

Most of the 13 passengers were either British executives with corporate ties to Portugal, or lower-ranking British government civil servants. There were also two or three children of British military personnel.[14] The bumped passengers were the teenage sons of Cornelia Vanderbilt: Cecil, George and William Cecil, who had been recalled to London from their Swiss boarding school. Being bumped by Howard saved their lives. William Cecil is best associated with his ownership and preservation of his grandfather George Washington Vanderbilt's Biltmore estate in North Carolina. William Cecil described a story after several months back in London in which he met a woman who said she had secret war information and used his mother's phone to put in a call to the British Air Ministry. She told them that she had a message from Leslie Howard.

While ostensibly on "entertainer goodwill" tours at the behest of the British Council, Howard's intelligence-gathering activities had attracted German interest. The chance to demoralise Britain with the loss of one of its most outspokenly patriotic figures may have motivated the Luftwaffe attack. Ronald Howard was convinced the order to shoot down Howard's airliner came directly from Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Nazi Germany, who had been ridiculed in one of Howard's films and who believed Howard to be the most dangerous British propagandist. The British Film Yearbook for 1945 described his work as "one of the most valuable facets of British propaganda". A 2008 book by Spanish writer José Rey Ximena claims that Howard was on a top-secret mission for Churchill to dissuade Francisco Franco, Spain's authoritarian dictator and head of state, from joining the Axis powers. Via an old girlfriend, Conchita Montenegro,[35] Howard had contacts with Ricardo Giménez-Arnau, a young diplomat in the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Further circumstantial background evidence is revealed in Jimmy Burns's 2009 biography of his father, spymaster Tom Burns. According to author William Stevenson in A Man called Intrepid, his biography of Sir William Samuel Stephenson (no relation), the senior representative of British Intelligence for the western hemisphere during the Second World War, Stephenson postulated that the Germans knew about Howard's mission and ordered the aircraft shot down. Stephenson further claimed that Churchill knew in advance of the German intention to shoot down the aircraft, but decided to allow it to proceed to protect the fact that the British had broken the German Enigma code.

The 2010 biography by Estel Eforgan, Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor, examines currently available evidence and concludes that Howard was not a specific target, corroborating the claims by German sources that the shootdown was "an error in judgement".

Concours on Savile Row in Mayfair 🇬🇧 The World’s Greatest Cars on Famous London Street | 4K HDR

Walking London’s Concours on Savile Row in Mayfair, featuring the world’s greatest cars on one of London’s most famous streets, Savile Row, renowned for its long history of bespoke tailoring. Held on the 24th and 25th May 2023, Concours on Savile Row will include more than 40 world-class cars will be on display, from pre-war thoroughbreds to the latest electric hypercars, as well as live music from the Swing Ninjas swing band. For further details visit - concoursonsavilerow.com

 

Video themes: Concours on Savile Row, Savile Row car show, expensive cars in Mayfair London, Mayfair posh car exhibition, London walk, sunny London walk, London spring walk, Belgravia walking tour, Belgravia flower show tour, London city walk, England walk, UK capital city.

 

Automotive cars on display include: Italian automotive style with Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Lamborghini and Lancia represented in the concours d’elegance, 1957 Ferrari 250GT Spyder Competizione, 1955 Ferrari 500 Mondial, Ferrari 275GTB/4, Lancia Aurelia B20 6th series, 1956 Maserati A6G/54 Zagato, Lamborghini 400GT 2+2, Alfa Romeo 6C 1750, Alfa Romeo 8C, 1959 Italia 2000 Coupé, Aston Martin V8 Vantage, Ford press fleet GT40, Bentley Huntsman reveal, Maeving RM1, Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR Pro, Aston Martin’s DBX707, Ford GT40, Mario Andretti took the Lotus 79/3 to the Formula 1 World Championship in 1978, Eletre is the first Lotus SUV, Mercedes-Benz 600, Morgan Super 3, Morgan Plus Six, Callum Vanquish 25, RML Short Wheelbase, Bentley S2 Continental running on electric power, Caton - latest version of its reimagined 1950s car, and the Electric Lady – the first fully electric Jaguar E-type Roadster with paintwork dedicated to Jimi Hendrix.

 

Recorded - 24th May 2023, Wednesday late morning

Weather Conditions & Temperature - dry & mostly sunny, 18°C/66°F