Possibly the first book ever written about flying saucers was the novel, called simply The Flying Saucer, by Bernard Newman. Magonia published an article by Philip Taylor about Newman's book, and another early UFO title The Riddle of the Flying Saucers, a non-fiction survey by Gerald Heard. You can read the piece HERE
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Newman seems to have been a rather enigmatic character, and although his autobiography seems to suggest he was a middle-level civil servant he had a remarkable number of very interesting contacts. On publication of Taylor's article on the Internet we received a comment from Newman's grandson, Simon Hipkin, challenging the idea that his grandfather was a spy, "much as I would like to be the grandson of a spy". Hipkin has produced an interesting website about Newman, and in browsing it I came across this reproduced news-clipping from The Times of 14 August 1964, which is now, sadly, of topical interest.
Newman seems to have been a rather enigmatic character, and although his autobiography seems to suggest he was a middle-level civil servant he had a remarkable number of very interesting contacts. On publication of Taylor's article on the Internet we received a comment from Newman's grandson, Simon Hipkin, challenging the idea that his grandfather was a spy, "much as I would like to be the grandson of a spy". Hipkin has produced an interesting website about Newman, and in browsing it I came across this reproduced news-clipping from The Times of 14 August 1964, which is now, sadly, of topical interest.
On the website it is noted that Newman met, amongst others, Clarke Gable, King Zog of Albania, Margaret Thatcher, Walt Disney and Adolf Hitler: 'My Danube journey began pleasantly in Germany. Before I passed into Austria I had a casual encounter with Hitler, who had become Chancellor a few months earlier. He was not very communicative, but when I mentioned Austria the pitch of his voice rose. I had little doubt that he would never be happy until he had added Austria to his Reich.'
Quite a visitors' book for a civil servant in the Ministry of Works!
Newman's book was reprinted a couple of years back, and we noted it HERE
1 comment:
Since our e mail exchange, I have found documents in the Basil Liddel Hart archive in Kings College London and it proves that he was not a spy in WW1. I've updated the wiki entry. But what I also found out was that on his travels, while writing his travel/history books, he would also write intel reports for the authorities back home. One of these is in BLH Archives but it is pretty tame.
Simon Hipkin
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