It’s 11.30am on Friday, June 23, 2023. I’ve been rifling the archives and punching in keywords for the past few hours. Suddenly I’m excited. I’ve found a report in a copy of Variety Magazine dated July 27, 1927. It’s unlikely to have been seen by another pair of eyes for close to a 100 years….
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14 Jones Street — A Failed Jazz Suicide
I want you to close your eyes and try to picture Gatsby’s parties. The corps of caterers have come and gone and left behind them a landscape of luxury. You have several hundred feet of canvas marquees and enough twinkling fairy lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enchanted garden. And then there’s the…
“A German Spy During the War” — The Real Jay Gatsby and a New York Spy Hunt
If you’ve read The Great Gatsby—or watched any of the movie adaptations — you’ll remember the scene. Before Nick Carraway ever lays eyes on his host, Jay Gatsby exists as this mysterious, elusive figure whispered over champagne glasses and jazz. We’ve already seen Daisy Buchanan jump out of her skin at the mere mention of…
‘The Protagonist of the Great Gatsby’ — Hallam Keep Williams, Gerlach and Havana
During research carried out for the eight-part Audible podcast, American Dreamer: Who Was Jay Gatsby?, veteran New York journalist, Joe Nocera shared some tantalising new information. A brand new report had come to light. According to a story published in the San Francisco Call in April 1950, ‘Baron Max von Gerlach’ had arrived in Havana,…
The Catholic Church in Gatsby Part II — Sigourney Fay & The Newman School for Boys
TURNING BACK THE CLOCK TO 1885 When Scott finally updated his editor Max Perkins on the progress of his third novel in June 1920, he teased him with a rather surprising spoiler: the new book would be set in the American Midwest in 1885 and would have “a Catholic element.” [52] 1885 had been an…
The Nightingale Shore Mystery Part VI — Why Kill Florence?
Wrapping this up neatly is not a simple task. It’s January 1920, and fifty-five year old nurse Florence Nightingale Shore enters the carriage of a train on the London to Hastings line. Her friend Mabel who is seeing her off that day, sees a man in a brown suit enter the carriage just as the…
The Nightingale Shore Mystery Part V — Oil Matters
Rafael Farina, the ambitious new head of Mi5’s G4 Russian Section is on the 4th Floor at 4 Queen’s Gate, South Kensington. Ever since the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George had agreed to hold trade talks with the Soviet his work has tripled in volume. There was a time when he had just a…
The Nightingale Shore Mystery Part IV — Russians in St Leonards
If Chief Inspector Haigh had been confused by the serial spy capers of his first suspect, Ernest C. Brown, then the intelligence making it on to the desk of the victim’s cousin at Mi5, Rafael Farina, would have been more perplexing still — and also well above his pay grade. On the one hand, Florence…
The Nightingale Shore Mystery Part III — A Cousin at Mi5
It is January 1920, and Britain stands on a razor’s edge. While the government prepares to broker trade with Lenin’s Soviet regime, a bitter faction war is exploding behind the scenes: anti-communist hardliners and intelligence figures are frantically trying to crush the Bolsheviks. At the heart of this fractured shadow-conflict stands Florence Nightingale Shore’s brother,…
The Pink-Suited Polytropoi – The Philosophy of Nietzsche and The Great Gatsby
He waved his hand toward the book-shelves. They’re real … absolutely real … have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real … It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness!What realism! — The…