ABSTRACT
A postwar rhymester, Lionel Hale, amusing himself as Baker Street was closing down, thought it would be
But in fact remarkably little on these lines was done in Great Britain after the war, a tribute to the unadventurous orderliness and to the absorbent qualities of British society. The British agents who returned to Great Britain seem to have remained on the right side of the law; though many of them revealed, sometimes years afterwards, scars made by the strains they had undergone. A few had nervous breakdowns; a number found themselves in the divorce court. Two foreigners had more summary treatment. A Pole who had returned from France saying he had run out of funds was caught trying to place a large block of French francs on the black market in Knightsbridge. And in April 1946 Déricourt was arrested at Croydon, on his way to pilot a civil aircraft back to France, with a substantial quantity of gold and platinum for which he had not troubled to secure an export licence. Viewing what appeared to be his excellent war record, the magistrate let him off with a £500 fine; the fine was paid for him by a private acquaintance never connected with any government.2 Otherwise nothing to report.
