Pomeranian attack – by Jude Montague

Spies and wireless telegraphy in Hastings with William Le Queux

Jude Montague goes on the trail of spy writer and columnist William Le Queux and his connection with John Logie Baird and the development of radio.

One hundred years ago the popular author William Le Queux was living in Hastings. He was one of the many fascinated with radio and its potential, and he was also one of John Logie Baird’s supporters, in his experiments with television. On 21 December 1923 his article about his own pioneer experiments in broadcasting was published in the fledgling Radio Times where he was described as one of the best known novelists of the day, but also as one of the pioneers of wireless telegraphy, one of the very first to experiment in this country.

In the following year (1924) Le Queux would become the first President of the Hastings, St Leonard’s and District Radio Society, whose inaugural lecture would be delivered by John Logie Baird, the town’s locally based inventor of television. As we explore the history of what Logie Baird did here during his inventive years we’ll see Le Queux again in the 2024 commemorations.

In Christmas 1923, at this point in Le Queux’s career he is looking back at his own life in journalism, politics and fiction. His speciality had become the espionage story. He himself was from an Anglo-French family, with a French father and English mother, and many of his books, even pre-WW1 explore how German influence was undermining British intelligence. In his key novel Spies of the Kaiser, subtitled Plotting the Downfall of England a picture in the frontispiece shows an impression impression young German spy as she signals the Kaiser’s battleships as they steam past the window. With the metal balcony and the sea beyond, she could be seated in one of the grand houses in the Marina where Le Queux was living in 1924 at number 93. It doesn’t have a blue plaque, which maybe it should considering his impact on popular culture. Think of James Bond and the spy films of the 1960s, they are indirectly part of his legacy.

Le Queux had been a correspondent for the Globe, first as a parliamentary reporter, and left to concentrate on writing and traveling. In 1912–13 he had been a correspondent in the Balkan war where he’d become an expert shot with a pistol.

Even during the war, with the rampant fear of strangers and the presence of spies in drama, in the cinema, in stories and in every day life Le Queux was seen by many as somewhat paranoid, conjuring up imaginary spies. It’s said he took to carrying a revolver around as he became convinced he could rely on no one. I wonder if he still had one in his pocket as he walked the streets of Hastings or whether the initial peace of the 1920s for Europe made him feel comfortable enough that he could leave his gun in the cabinet at home.

Le Queux looked back on his life experience in his address for the 1923 Christmas edition of the Radio Times. ‘I think I may justly claim to be have been one of the earliest experimenters in the field of radio-telegraphy’, he muses, ‘yet it all happened by chance’. He went to Livorno (Leghorn as it was called at the time) to mull over some mystery plots and met the young Marconi who was making his first experiments in wire-less telegraphy’. When Marconi went to England to pursue backing for his invention Le Queux moved into his mother’s apartment and began to dabble in many aspects of radio ‘possessing various sets, coherers, magnetic, electrolytic detectors and various crystals’.

Many of the amusing incidents of his early adventures involve stories of spies or imaginary spies. I’m always drawn to the slapstick and sentimentality of stories with animals and Le Queux was himself a dog-lover. ‘While broadcasting, my pet Pomeranian, who yaps at every stranger discovered a visitor in the room and immediately attacked him. The result was an animated scene, all of which, together with the visitor’s forcible remarks, came out on the loud-speaker in a startled audience at St Albans’.

Another tale is of the young Crown Prince of Johore, called Biffi by his friends, taking to the microphone and speaking to his brother Ahmed who was listening on a set in Ipswich. He greeted his brother, ‘Hullo! I’m Biffi – speaking from 2AZ’, and a listener tapped out in Morse, ‘2AZ, if your friend is Beefy he needn’t tell us so. Who is he? Please reply.’

Le Queux will return during the 2024 anniversary of Logie Baird’s television experiments in Hastings as he was an early supporter of the inventor and his early roads into ‘seeing with wireless’.

The Hastings Electronics and Radio Club (HERC) which was set up in the 1920s by Le Queux and others can be found online at hastings-electronics-radio-club.com and they welcome new members.

Also in: History