And for those folks who are reading this (after that brief announcement) I thought I’d start with Leslie Howard.
This turned out to be unimaginably earth-shattering.
I have been working on this ‘storyline’ (last time I use quotation marks) on and off for more than a decade. It’s like everything about this man and his life has been a lightning rod, connecting to any and all sources of energy in striking distance. And I still haven’t scratched the surface.
Without any hyperbole I can say with absolute confidence that a man acting in all innocence who had lived in Sydenham is implicated in his plane being shot down, all because of Bletchley Park. I have located the documentation. Because everything I’ve researched is all out there I now have to live with the turmoil of chronic self-doubt because part of my brain says this is too good to be true. For this reason I have developed a small network of correspondents who have been helping me evaluate my findings.
I can’t go through their individual names for obvious reasons, but the least I can do is to thank the Friends of Albion Millennium Green, Forest Hill Society, Sydenham Society, the late Steve Grindlay and the late Mike Guilfoyle (of Brockley Cemetery) for tolerating and sometimes indulging my laser focus on connecting tiny details from obscure plots here and there and creating giant connect-the-dots style portraits.
Leslie Howard has also provided backstories for interpreting the significance of the Havelock dynasty, a mystery surrounding Mr Horniman’s second wife and an ambiguous but significant attestation about a central theme in my ongoing project called The Mystery of Forest Place.