Thanks Bob. Very interesting.
I had not read before that the Foreign Office had exonerated PGW. I regret that they did not come forth and clarify the situation at the time. PGW's last years would have been less unhappy.
"On 4 June, 1947, several months after the payments in question were known to all the authorities concerned, another member of the Foreign Office staff had commented, after receiving information from a member of his staff that had been requested by MI5:
"I feel bound to observe that it seems to me most regrettable that we should still be pursuing this matter more than two years after the end of the war in Europe. I do not think that anyone would seriously deny that ‘L’affaire Wodehouse’ was very much a storm in a teacup. It is perfectly plain to any unbiased observer that Mr Wodehouse made the celebrated broadcasts in all innocence and without any evil intent. He is reported to be of an entirely apolitical cast of mind; much of the furore of course was the result of literary jealousies.
Assuming that the present payments prove to have been innocuous I would suggest that in any reply we may make to Mr Wakefield we should take occasion to deprecate MI5’s apparent enthusiasm for the chase and to indicate that in our view this matter is trivial in itself and at the distance of time, cast off into oblivion . . . "
Bob