Books

Reading The Irregulars, Jennet Conant's wonderfully rendered history of British spy jinks in Washington during World War II, left me with this regret: that Robert Altman, the great director of ensemble casts and vintage scenes, isn't still alive.

Wartime Washington was a place and time like no other, rich in atmosphere, dense in human drama. It calls to mind Mr. Altman's Nashville, the Wild West of McCabe and Mrs. Miller and the highs and lows of British society in Gosford Park.

Only one other book has caught the milieu as well: Jon Meacham's Franklin and Winston, about the wartime friendship between President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill. Interestingly, both books take a British perspective. It's the view of an ally, not an outsider, who shares a language, traditions and an opposition to a common enemy, yet is different in many ways.

This division, between the polished but needy Brits and their earnest, blunt, sometimes overbearing offspring, is the source of much of the humor of Ms. Conant's tale. Here's a story of espionage that not only anticipates James Bond, but includes among its main characters Mr. Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, and a number of incidents that later figure in the Bond novels.

The story of the British spies in wartime Washington and their chief, William Stevenson, the celebrated Man Called Intrepid, has been told many times, mainly by its participants, many of them well-known writers. Ms. Conant focuses on Roald Dahl, a 6-foot-6 pilot who became an invalid and was sent to America to ingratiate himself among the prominent, something Mr. Dahl did very well, especially with American women.

There unfolds a merry tale of American money, powers and politics that includes the current and soon-to-be dumped vice president, Henry Wallace; playwright Clare Boothe Luce, then a congresswoman and a lover of Mr. Dahl's; the up-and-coming congressman, Lyndon B. Johnson; columnist Drew Pearson; and dozens of other names forgotten today but distinctive to the times.

Mr. Dahl, already successful as a writer, moved easily in Washington society and was welcomed into the private rooms of the White House after he befriended Eleanor Roosevelt.

Ms. Conant captures the grace, humor and high spirits of the Roosevelt White House, the fascinating array of people who moved through the Roosevelts' lives and, most keenly, the complicated tensions and concessions within their marriage, mirroring much of American business and politics at the time.

The Irregulars is a thoroughly enjoyable book, polished and inconsequential in the best ways. Nothing very crucial is determined by these boy spies, these "Baker Street Irregulars." Yet at the same time, the times were desperate, especially for the British, and much depended upon maintaining American goodwill and support.

Author and reviewer David Walton lives and teaches in Pittsburgh.

Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington

Jennet Conant

(Simon & Schuster, $27.95)

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