Boo Snubs
Of course there will never be any espionage centre as remarkable as Lisbon during the last war. I spent three months in the summer of 1940, the months which covered the fall of France and Dunkirk, in Lisbon. One of the several hats which I was wearing was that of an official Portuguese government guest for the Dois Centenarios, the double anniversary of the foundation, on both occasions with the help of the British, of the kingdom of Portugal.
The Aviz Hotel was a delightful hotel but I got a trifle irked by having my shirts turned over by the valet in German pay, the valet in Italian pay, the valet in Vichy French pay, for all I know the valet in our pay, and the valet in the Portuguese Secret Police pay, not always, evidently, with the cleanest of fingers, so I used to put them in a suitcase, put a hair round one lock and lock it up. The suitcase was always still locked but the hair was always broken. Finally I cleared Out a suitcase, put the whole of the blotter inside and wrote on the blotter in blue crayon pencil in large letters: "Boo Snubs!" This time I put a hair round both locks. You can imagine the Germans deciding that it was undoubtedly a form of cipher and wasting a large part of the time of the 'One Thousand Year Reich' while they put it into every kind of code and cipher. A schoolboy joke, but in those terrible days one which gave me a considerable amount of pleasure.
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