It is the summer of 1939.

Ernest Tennant, a very well-to-do man, travels to Germany.

Again, one more time.

This time, I believe, with the blessing of his government,

where he and Graham Christie and Conwell Evans have been

providing information to Van Citrus and amateurs. And their information, while extremely accurate,

is regarded condescendingly sometimes, I think, when I've read this. Charles, the Tenant Mission

is the strangest episode of a series of strange episodes.

What was the ambition? What was the thinking why Ernest Tenet agreed to it and what the

hopes were for the mission? He, Tenant conceives of this entirely on his own, but he gets in touch with Ten Downing Street

to Horace Wilson, who then liaises with Chamberlain, and offers his services to go incognito,

plausibly deniably, as it were, to visit Ribbentrop, his old friend with whom he'd set up the

Anglo-German fellowship. They'd seen very little each other for about 18 months, but he thinks

that he may be able to, that he believes that Hitler and Ribbentrop was still anxious for

friendship with this country, which even Horace Wilson, the doyen of appeasement, at the point still found

improbable.

But the Downing Street has sponsored a handful of these sorts of missions, and so they agree to do

it as long as their connection is kept secret.

The mission takes him to a castle in Austria, which von Ribbentrop, who is a compulsive,

false witness, a.k.a. liar, tells him that he's recently acquired it. I guess the

presumption is with his earnings or his wife's wealth.

But in fact, it's a confiscated castle, a sloss fustle.

...