Stourbridge author draws from his grandfather's First World War experience as a 'secret agent'
As a child Ash James heard whispers that his grandfather had once caught a spy. But he never struck up the courage to ask him and it was never discussed.
During lockdown, Ash, who lives in Stourbridge, began looking through a box of his grandfather’s old documents, postcards and medals. As he went, he learned more about his experiences when he was stationed in Cairo during the First World War.
“My grandad never talked about these times and that’s why I was intrigued by this box of treasures passed down to me by my dad,” says Ash. George Percy James had been a policeman in the village of Kempsey, near Worcester, before enlisting in the Worcestershire Regiment in 1916. After leaving Egypt in 1919, he returned to police work, later becoming a sergeant in Warley in Sandwell.
“He was a very honourable man and he enlisted even though he had six children at the time. I think it would have been difficult for him to walk around the village without enlisting,” says Ash.
His curiosity was piqued by a tram pass that contained the words “secret agent” in French and a document that gave his grandfather permission to carry out undercover surveillance.
He also unearthed a letter to George written by a Cairo banker, who seemed to have been acting as his local agent, asking for help.
“The more I dug, the more apparent it became that Grandad had played something of a civilian plain-clothes military police role in this huge Arabic city,” says Ash. “Not only that, even though technically just a corporal he, together with his fellow plain-clothed colleague was commended by his superiors for his role in the ‘Sugar Case’, eventually receiving the Meritorious Service Medal.”
Although the exact details of the Sugar Case are unknown, he has discovered that at the time sugar, a major resource for the Egyptian economy and greatly demanded by the locals, was being stolen by various groups.
“My grandad was able to make a life for himself. He was working with people from a different group of society to him – he was working with people he shouldn’t have met in a place he shouldn’t have been,” says Ash.
Learning more about his grandfather’s exploits led Ash, who was previously a deputy headteacher at The High Arcal School in Sedgley, to write a novel partly inspired by his experiences.
Ash, who over the years has written poetry, articles for a football fanzine and two novels, had already been mulling over a seed of an idea thanks to his fascination with an old well and a nearby cave he had discovered during a visit to to Menorca.
“I took lots of photos and my family joked about it. In my head there was a book,” says Ash.
He has brought both Cairo and Menorca together in The Poet Laurie Ate, which has been published by Troubador.
The synopsis reads: “Thomas Laurie was much needed; a village policeman and honourable man, he kept the peace at home, even in war.
“Yet driven by conscience and the stares of strangers, he’d entered an army enlisting office in Worcester and jumped. Now, owned by King and country he was thousands of miles from those he loved, holed up in a rat-infested carpet shop in a Cairo backstreet. Somewhere opposite, within the gloom of a tired hostel, was the spy. He and Corporal Nooney would sort it, they always did. But still the doubts nagged: Mildred Lowthian, his senior officer at the Arab Bureau was unlike any woman he’d known, but she too seemed burdened by the duplicity of superiors.
“And the ignorance and disdain of those with power had shocked. Who was he really helping?
“At the same hour in her farmhouse on the Spanish island of Menorca, the formidable self-made landowner Llucia Quintana sat fearing for the safety of Oriol, her only son and heir.
“His routine trading trip to Cairo was to be his last; Mediterranean passage had become increasingly hostile and British control of the city unpredictable. He’d not made contact; but how could she rely upon others for help given her past?”
Although the story is a work of fiction, it was important to Ash that it accurately portrayed what life would have been like for his characters.
“I was so eager to start writing but I knew, if I was to do it justice, I needed to do research. I spent a year researching and understanding what was happening in Egypt at the time,” says Ash, who is married to Elaine and has two children and three grandchildren.
Ash says he hopes people will enjoy reading the story, which explores the universal and timeless themes of love, honour, trust and truth, as much as he enjoyed writing it.
“I’m really happy that I have been able to do it. I understand my grandfather a lot more now. I think he would have been proud of his achievements,” he adds.
The Poet Laurie Ate is available now. For more information, see ashjamesarts.co.uk or troubador.co.uk/bookshop/historical/the-poet-laurie-ate
