Westbourne Book Binge - Dr Helen Fry – The London Cage: the Secret History of Britain’s Second World War Interrogation Centre

About Us

In 1940, behind locked doors in Kensington Palace Gardens, the War Office requisitioned three mansion houses on behalf of British intelligence to establish a clandestine interrogation centre. Dubbed “Millionaire’s Row” and located in one of London’s most exclusive streets, the London Cage held German prisoners of war who could not be broken under normal conditions of interrogation at other ‘cages’ in Britain.

Helen will talk with Southbourne resident and cyber-security expert Gordon Fong about how POWs were subjected to “special intelligence treatment” that was designed to break their will to resist; what life was like inside the cage, reconstructed fully for the first time from declassified files, and about the challenges and constraints of writing intelligence history today where sometimes the nation’s secrets are still heavily guarded even after 70 years.

You will be able to “interrogate” Helen yourself during the question and answer part of her talk and also during the book signing.