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George Slocombe

George Edward Slocombe was a British journalist and novelist.

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Jul 31, 2026
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George Edward Slocombe (March 8, 1894-December 19, 1963) was a British journalist and novelist.

Biography

Slocombe was born in Bristol.1 He started work as a journalist for the Daily Herald in 1912 and became the paper's Chief Foreign Correspondent in 1919.2 He was recruited to work at the paper by Rowland Kenney, starting his career as Kenney's secretary.3 Slocombe interviewed Benito Mussolini at the Cannes Conference in 1922.4 Slocombe later wrote a fictionalized depiction of Mussolini in his novel, Romance of a Dictator.5

In Paris, Slocombe worked for William Ewer at the Federated Press of America.6 In this position, Slocombe sent Ewer confidential copies of French reports sent to the French Foreign Office.7 Ewer paid him $1000 a month for supplying the documents.8 Slocombe was never prosecuted by the British government for these activities and he returned to England in 1940.9

Personal life

In 1921, while living in Paris, he had an affair with Edna St. Vincent Millay.10 Slocombe was the father of cinematographer Douglas Slocombe.11

Bibliography

Bibliography

  • Romance of a Dictator (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932)
  • Don John of Austria, the Victor of Lepanto (1547-1578) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1936)
  • William the Conqueror (London: Hutchinson, 1959)
  • The Dangerous Sea: The Mediterranean and Its Future (New York : Macmillan, 1937)
  • Escape Into the Past: A Novel (London : George G. Harrap, 1943)
  • Sons of the Conqueror (London : Hutchinson, 1960)
References

References

  1. Butts, Mary (2002). The Journals of Mary Butts. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 280. ISBN 9780300132892.
  2. Madeira, Victor (2014). Britannia and the Bear: The Anglo-Russian Intelligence Wars, 1917-1929. Boydell Press. p. 41. ISBN 9781843838951.
  3. Richards, Huw (1997). The bloody circus : The Daily Herald and the left. London: Pluto Press. p. 17. ISBN 0745311172.
  4. Kirkpatrick, Ivone (1964). Mussolini: Study of a Demagogue. London: Odhams. p. 119.
  5. Alpers, Benjamin L. (2003). Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s-1950s. University of North Carolina Press. p. 24. ISBN 9780807854167.
  6. West, Nigel (2014). Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence. Scarecrow Press. p. 203. ISBN 9780810878976.
  7. Curry, John Court (1999). The Security Service 1908-1945: The Official History. Public Record Office. p. 97. ISBN 9781873162798.
  8. Bennett, Gill (2006). Churchill's Man of Mystery: Desmond Morton and the World of Intelligence. Taylor & Francis. p. 123. ISBN 9781134160341.
  9. Madeira, Victor (December 2003). "Moscow's Interwar Infiltration of British Intelligence, 1919–1929". The Historical Journal. 46 (4): 930.
  10. Epstein, Daniel Mark (2002). What My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Henry Holt and Company. p. 159. ISBN 9780805071818.
  11. Ellis, David A. (2012). Conversations with Cinematographers. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 13. ISBN 9780810881266.