Magdalene

Douglas Kuehn

Description

This is the third novel in the series, The Addlestone Chronicles.
My dual aims have been to expose the evil intent associated with the Nazi programme called Lebensborn as well as acquaint the reader with the historical parallels of the rise of 1930s fascism with contemporary political events and discourse. Many of the events catalogued in all three novels, show marked similarities to events and rhetoric in early 21st century US as well as the rise of potential far-right dictators in the UK, France, Italy, Poland, Turkey, not forgetting, Putin’s Russia.
The primary focus in this novel is the abuse of girls and women in the Irish Magdalene Laundry system which have existed for the last 200 hundred years and were only finally shut down in 1996.
All three novels follow the same characters in their roles as British spies and philantropists. In this novel their mission is to expose the Nazi’s attempts to enlist Ireland as an ally in their aims to dominate Europe as well as provide girls for their ongoing Lebensborn breeding programme.

Sujets

• History
• Lebensborn
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse UK
• Date de parution: 19 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781728379951
• Langue: English

Extrait

MAGDALENE
ADDLESTONE CHRONICLES BOOK III
 
August 23 rd , 1936 – November 16 th , 1936
 
 
DOUGLAS KUEHN
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
AuthorHouse™ UK
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Phone: UK TFN: 0800 0148641 (Toll Free inside the UK)             UK Local: (02) 0369 56322 ([phone] from outside the UK)
 
 
 
 
 
© 2023 Douglas Kuehn. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse 10/23/2023
 
ISBN: 978-1-7283-7994-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-7283-7996-8 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-7283-7995-1 (e)
 
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
 
 
“We learn from history, that we do not learn from his tory.”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770–1831. He influenced Marxism and American Pragmatism.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1    Sunday, August 23 rd , 1936 St Paul’s Church, Addlestone
2    Tuesday, August 25 th Gibbs’ Building, Cambridge
3    Wednesday, August 26 th Archibald Ramsay, MP
4    Saturday, August 29 th Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London
5    Fortnight Beginning Sunday, August 30 th Woburn Hall
6    Tuesday, September 15 th Tiffanys, London
7    Saturday, September 19 th Childcare
8    Tuesday, September 29 th King’s College
9    Sunday, October 4 th Tower Hill, London
10   Monday, October 5th Woburn Library
11   Sunday, October 11 th The Chase, Dublin
12   Monday, October 12th O’Donoghue’s
13   Tuesday, October 13th Phoenix Park
14   Wednesday, October 14 th Trinity College
15   Thursday, October 15 th Gloucester Street Refuge
16   Friday, October 16 th Aubrey Wishart
17   Saturday, October 17 th Sir Edward Scott-Piper
18   Sunday, October 18 th Temple Bar
19   Monday, October 19 th The Chase
20   Tuesday, October 20 th The National Museum of Ireland
21   Wednesday, October 21 st St James’s Hospital
22   Thursday, October 22 nd The Chase
23   Friday, October 23 rd Gloucester Street/Phoenix Park
24   Sunday, October 25 th North of the Liffey
25   Monday, October 26 th Cameron Smythe
26   Tuesday, October 27 th The Chase
27   Wednesday, October 28 th Gloucester Street Refuge
28   Thursday, October 29 th The Chase Drawing Room
29   Friday, October 30 th Dermot Cassidy
30   Saturday, October 31 st Rhetorical Questions
31   Sunday, November 1 st Rosslare, County Wexford
32   Monday, November 2 nd Phoenix Park
33   Tuesday, November 3 rd Phoenix Park & St James’s Hospital
34   Wednesday, November 4 th Room #23
35   Thursday, November 5 th The Grand Hotel
36   Friday, November 6 th St James’s Hospital
37   Sunday, November 8 th Glasnevin Cemetery
38   Monday, November 9 th Headmistress
39   Tuesday, November 10 th Book of Kells
40   Wednesday, November 11 th Holyhead, Wales
41   Thursday, November 12 th Gibbs’ Building
42   Friday, November 13 th Woburn & Oxford
43   Saturday, November 14 th Cambridge & Chelsea
44   Sunday, November 15 th Assault
45   Monday, November 16 th Return to Normalcy
46   Saturday, November 21 st Celebratory Dinner
Epilogue
Appendix I
Historical Background
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 
I’d like to thank Linda Holst Long for her enduring assistance at every stage of this effort. Not only has she been an uncomplaining sounding board for my ideas, she has also made suggestions as to how I might improve the plot. For example, she proposed a confrontation in a Dublin museum and suggested inserting the technology of shortwave radio to rescue the family in the ultimate attack on Woburn Hall. She endured the tedium of proofreading and for that, I am forever grateful. She joined me in Ireland in the summer of 2022 where I was able to get a feeling for Dublin and, indeed, the close proximity of the central locations in the book such as the nearness of the Merrion Hotel to the Irish National Museum. I’d especially like to thank my dear sister, Dr Phyllis Kuehn, a retired Professor of English, for her proofreading and copy-editing skills. I’d also like thank David Raymond for his help in proofreading an earlier post-publication galley.
The cover photo was taken by Linda Holst Long at University College, Cork, Ireland in August 2022.
INTRODUCTION
 
As with the two previous books, Magdalene is a work of historical fiction, whereby the usual caveats apply. I do not intend nor wish to imply any similarity between the fictional characters in this novel with any persons, living or dead. Apart from those actors mentioned in the Historical Background section at the end of this novel, all the other characters the SIS couples encounter in Ireland are fictitious.
As this is a sequential continuation of the earlier novels, many of the same actors appear in all three. Below are brief biographies of the dramatis personae.
James Harcourt-Heath : As a twenty-four-year-old undergraduate, he read maths at King’s College, Cambridge. He and his twin sister, Beatrice , have an older sister, Marjorie , who is married to Commander Jonathan Lawrence , an officer in the Royal Navy. James, Beatrice, and Marjorie were orphaned in May 1915 when their parents were passengers when the Lusitania was it was torpedoed by a German U-boat. James attended Dulwich College in South London as a border. While at King’s, he was recruited into the Secret Services’ department MI5 by his math’s tutor Richard Chillingw orth .
Louise de la Béré : She was also an orphan. Her parents were passengers on the Titanic when it sank in April 1912. She was not yet a year old and was raised by a nanny employed with the help of her parent’s substantial wealth. According to their will, she would inherit this when she turned twenty-five years old. Educated at Cheltenham Ladies College, she read Modern Languages at Newnham College, Cambridge. In her second year, she was recruited to MI5 by Sybil Fergusson , her academic supervisor. She and James court while at Cambridge and marry in July 1935 at St Paul’s parish church in Addlestone, Surrey.
Beatrice Hutchinson : In Book II, James’s sister Beatrice marries Donald Hutchinson , an experienced MI6 agent. Bea was educated at James Allen’s Girls’ School in East Dulwich, London. After that, she volunteered at the Addlestone Orphanage for Foundling Girls and served on the Board of Directors of the Weybridge Mother and Baby Home. Through her husband, Bea was recruited as an MI6 agent, specialising in codes and cyphers.
Donald Hutchinson : Is 30 years old and a graduate of Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford. There he was awarded a first-class honours degree in Modern Languages along with a boxing Blue. As the elder son of Lord Hutchinson of Whorlton , a hereditary peer, he will eventually inherit the title.
Humphrey Harcourt-Heath : He is James, Bea, and Marjorie’s grandfather and married to Dorothy . They live at Woburn Hall, an agricultural estate in Addlestone, Surrey. As a retired colonel, he served as an officer in the British Army during the two sieges of Mafeking in Southern Africa. After the Great War, he was in charge of nearby Brooklands Aerodrome which hosted the design team for the Spitfire fighter aircraft.
Major General Sir Nicholas Gavin-Wheeler : He is James, Bea and Marjorie’s reserve godparent. He and his wife, Lady Helen , live in Dublin. Nicholas was Humphrey’s superior officer in Southern Africa during the Boer Wars. He also was stationed at the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar in the 1920s. He regularly attends meetings and gives advice to the British Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office in London.
Jarvis : Is Woburn’s head butler. He served in the Great War as a regimental sergeant major and was gassed in the trenches during the Battle of the Somme.
Peets : Was a former inmate of the Addlestone Reform School. He is employed as footman and chauffeur at Woburn Hall.
Roake : Served as the Gavin-Wheeler’s butler in Dublin.
As mentioned in the first two books, the inspiration for these novels was the Bride’s Book , written by Dorothy Stote. It was only published for three years between 1934 and 1936. I purchased this curious tome at Westminster Antiquarian Book Fair in the late 1990s. In 2014, an idle moment, I pulled it off my bookshelf and, for the first time, noticed that the final pages titled Wedding Guests and Wedding Presents had been filled in to record details of an actual wedding. Although no surnames were mentioned, internet research allowed me to discover that the person who completed the Bride’s Book was Rose Betty Gregory . She organised her wedding to Humphrey Norman Paine . Both lived Addlestone and, given the size of their households, were obviously exceedingly wealthy. Norman Paine was a Director of a London shipping company and Rose was effectively a spinster being 35 years old when they married on July 24 th , 1937. As with the earlier novels, I give a nod to Rose and Norman as they are present at the christening dinner and contribute financially to the Ireland A