Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington

(NYTBR) - Roald Dahl is famous for his mischievous children’s stories. But as Jennet Conant reports in “The Irregulars,” he was also a British spy. Conant, who has written popular accounts of the secret development of radar and the atomic bomb, shows that Dahl, a former R.A.F. hero, parachuted himself into Washington blue-blood circles in 1942 and used his embassy post to begin spying on Britain’s closest and most important ally. Continued

Portrait of Roald Dahl by Carl Van Vechten (Library of Congress)