Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy?: The Troublesome Case of Sir Edgar Speyer
    Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy?: The Troublesome Case of Sir Edgar Speyer
    Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy?: The Troublesome Case of Sir Edgar Speyer
    Ebook223 pages3 hours

    Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy?: The Troublesome Case of Sir Edgar Speyer

    By Antony Lentin

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Sir Edgar Speyer was a conspicuous figure in the financial, cultural, social and political life of Edwardian London. Head of the syndicate which financed the construction of the deep "tube lines" and "King of the Underground", he was also a connoisseur and active patron of the arts who rescued the "Prom" from collapse, enhanced the nation's musical and artistic life at his own expense and directed the funding of Captain Scott's Antarctic expeditions. Speyer and his wife, the concert violinist, Leonora Speyer lived in fabulously magnificent style. Early in the early summer of 1914 they stood at the peak of their success and celebrity in London society. Within weeks, on the outbreak of war, they became pariahs, objects of suspicion and aversion. Despite having been a naturalised British citizen for over 20 years and an ubiquitous public benefactor, Speyer found himself ostracised by society and mercilessly harried by the Northcliffe press. Under the Aliens Act of 1918, Speyer was summoned in 1921 before a judicial enquiry which found him guilty of disloyalty and disaffection and of communicating and trading with the enemy. He was stripped of his citizenship and membership of the Privy Council. Pilloried by The Times as a traitor, Speyer vehemently denied the charges, but he never returned to England thereafter and never forgot his ordeal.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHaus Publishing
    Release dateApr 16, 2013
    ISBN9781908323170
    Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy?: The Troublesome Case of Sir Edgar Speyer

    Related to Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy?

    Related ebooks

    Historical Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Bring Back The Law Lords

      Jan 25, 2024

      Bring Back The Law Lords
      8 min read

    • Article

      Things Ain't What They Used To Be

      May 3, 2023

      Janan Ganesh, a writer on the Financial Times, has claimed there is a shortage of reactionary voices in Britain today. Mr Ganesh could nominate only one true reactionary in British public life: the commentator Peter Hitchens. There just aren't enough

      3 min read

    • Article

      Fathers Of The Republic

      Sep 28, 2023

      Fathers Of The Republic
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Bloody Code

      Jun 10, 2021

      The Bloody Code
      6 min read

    • Article

      Enemies Of The State

      Dec 28, 2021

      Enemies Of The State
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Myth Of Winston’s Legacy

      Feb 23, 2023

      AS THE GOVERNMENT makes noises about leaving the European Convention on Human Rights for the umptieth time, defenders of the Strasbourg regime have added an effective new argument to their rhetorical arsenal. The UK should not leave the ECHR, they sa

      3 min read

    • Article

      Opinion Letters

      Mar 22, 2024

      Letters for publication weekly.letters@theguardian.com Please include a full postal address and a reference to the article. We may edit letters. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions, see: THEGUARDIAN.COM/LE

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Myth Of Winston’s Legacy

      Feb 23, 2023

      AS THE GOVERNMENT makes noises about leaving the European Convention on Human Rights for the umptieth time, defenders of the Strasbourg regime have added an effective new argument to their rhetorical arsenal. The UK should not leave the ECHR, they sa

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Porteous Riots

      Dec 10, 2022

      The Porteous Riots
      2 min read

    • Article

      Reporting On The Troubles

      Oct 31, 2019

      Reporting On The Troubles
      8 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Apr 15, 2021

      Letters
      4 min read

    • Article

      Return Of The Anglo-Irish

      Jul 27, 2022

      Return Of The Anglo-Irish
      3 min read

    • Article

      Criminal Records Online

      Aug 25, 2020

      Criminal Records Online
      5 min read

    • Article

      Learning To Love Big Brother

      Nov 26, 2020

      Learning To Love Big Brother
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Popish Plot

      Aug 4, 2022

      The Popish Plot
      9 min read

    • Article

      Sixty Years On The Street Of Shame

      Mar 8, 2023

      I am now marking 60 years as a working scribe. I favour the word ‘scribe' rather than ‘hack'. The latter implies, surely implausibly, that a journalist will do anyone's bidding for money. There have been vast changes in the media since my debut in jo

      3 min read

    • Article

      “Let Right Be Done!”

      Jul 21, 2017

      “Let Right Be Done!”
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Man Who Saved The Firm

      Apr 29, 2021

      AMID ALL THE JUSTIFIED TRIBUTES paid to the Duke of Edinburgh after his death on 9 April there seemed little or no recognition of one crucial point about him. It was accepted that, once he had found his feet as consort, he brought much influence and

      4 min read

    • Article

      Catholic Hysteria

      Apr 25, 2019

      Catholic Hysteria
      8 min read

    • Article

      Churchill and Home Rule for Ireland

      Aug 2, 2022

      Having twice changed political parties, Winston Churchill was especially sensitive to the charge that this displayed political inconsistency if not opportunism on his part. Indeed, his 1932 collection of essays Thoughts and Adventures contains an ent

      9 min read

    • Article

      Churchill in Dundee, 1921

      Aug 5, 2020

      Churchill in Dundee, 1921
      9 min read

    • Article

      An Epoch-making Idea

      May 13, 2020

      An Epoch-making Idea
      8 min read

    • Article

      Liberal Views

      Jan 19, 2023

      Liberal Views
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy?

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Banker, Traitor, Scapegoat, Spy? - Antony Lentin

      QC

      Introduction

      Micat exitiale superbis

      ‘A fatal thunderbolt strikes down the proud’.

      Motto beneath a painted mythological roundel

      on the ceiling of the Speyers’ music room

      This ... charge that you were a spy and a traitor

      John Roskill, KC. Counsel to Sir Edgar Speyer,

      28 October 1921

      My interest in Edgar and Leonora Speyer really began in the music room of their great house at 46 Grosvenor Street, Mayfair, where I was drawn by curiosity about the case. The house (now the headquarters of an investment advisory company) has seen superficial changes since they left it in 1915 on what turned out to be, though they did not know it at the time, a journey into exile. The spacious music room, then a celebrated centre of London’s cultural life, running almost the length of the house and forming its focal point, is now a boardroom, divided by a long table. The portrait of Leonora by John Singer Sargent which then dominated the left-hand wall has been replaced by a mirror. The elaborate pipe-organ which faced it at the opposite end of the room was removed from its recess and the gap where the pipes stood has been crudely patched over. From the windows, the view of what was an Italian garden is marred by ugly extensions jutting out from the buildings opposite. But the Louis XV-style interior remains, with its delicate carved wood panelling and its high, painted allegorical ceiling. It takes little imagination to picture candelabras reflected in the mirrors, guests in evening dress, and the music-making that took place there a century ago, for Leonora was a concert violinist and music was at the heart of Edgar’s aesthetic life.

      The Speyers customarily offered hospitality to distinguished foreign musicians and composers who happened to be in London. It was therefore natural that when in 1906 the elderly Edvard Grieg came to London on his way to receive an honorary degree from the University of Oxford, Edgar and Leonora should press him to spend a few days at Grosvenor Street. Edvard and his wife, the soprano Nina Grieg, arrived in the morning. After lunch, they found themselves ‘quite alone with our host and hostess’ and ‘fortunate enough to get to know them better’.¹ The four retired to the music room, where Grieg sat at the piano and played several of his compositions. Then Edgar and Leonora persuaded Nina to sing. Which of Grieg’s songs she performed one would give much to know, for, as the composer noted with surprise, it moved Edgar to tears. My interest was heightened by this man of business who revealed a romantic sensibility.

      In the first decade of the 20th century the name of Edgar Speyer was frequently in the news. Financier and entrepreneur, ‘King of the London Underground’, public benefactor, patron of music and the arts, a friend of the Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, and his redoubtable wife Margot, a regular guest in Downing Street, Edgar was a known figure in London society, respected and admired, a metropolitan Maecenas. Yet his name today is virtually unknown except as that of the first of two men, separated by an interval of 90 years, to be struck, at the Government’s behest, from the roll of the Privy Council.*

      Of German parentage and education, Speyer, who was granted British nationality at the age of 29, was not the first public man to become the target of national passions aroused by the Great War. Solely on account of his foreign birth, Prince Louis of Battenberg was forced to resign as first Sea Lord in October 1914, and the Lord Chancellor, Lord Haldane, was driven from office in May 1915 for his supposed pro-German sympathies. At the same time that Haldane quitted public life, Edgar and Leonora Speyer and their three young daughters left England to seek respite in America from a campaign of vilification that had pursued them since August

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1