In 1925 she joined the staff of the Croydon Advertiser. She also wrote freelance articles for the Birmingham Mail and contributed short stories for various woman's magazines. Her writing career came to a halt when she married Reginald Briscoe, a clerk at the Ministry of Works, in 1929. (4)

A son, Paul Briscoe, was born in Streatham on 12th July 1930. Reginald Briscoe died in 1932, following an emergency operation for appendicitis, "leaving a widow who was bitter that he had not taken out life insurance, and resentful that she was encumbered with a son, for whom she felt no affection". (5)

Norah Briscoe was determined to resume her career as a journalist and employed a nanny to look after Paul: "Beatrice was large, round and deaf, and she spoiled me utterly". More importantly, Beatrice provided him with "the affection, the hugs and kisses his mother refused him". (6)

In 1934 Norah Briscoe took a holiday in Nazi Germany. She later wrote in her unpublished autobiography: "We seemed to have found in that other land of mountains and streams and towering forests, a corner of the world as remote from war and evil as was possible... You could pray, dance, drink, smoke, and worship as you pleased. Young men in leather breeches leaped over flames on Midsummer Night in a pagan ritual and heard Mass next day. You could follow any creed you liked - provided you followed the Führer, too. And whose business was that but their own?" (7)

On his mother's return to England she joined the PR department of Unilever. One of the tasks she was given was to collect all references to Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the National Union of Fascists, that had appeared in all the newspapers owned by Lord Rothermere. She later learned that the cuttings had been requested by some Jewish directors of Unilever. (8)

Norah Briscoe discovered several articles that supported Mosley including an article by Rothermere in The Daily Mail in which he praised Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine". Rothermere added: "Timid alarmists all this week have been whimpering that the rapid growth in numbers of the British Blackshirts is preparing the way for a system of rulership by means of steel whips and concentration camps. Very few of these panic-mongers have any personal knowledge of the countries that are already under Blackshirt government. The notion that a permanent reign of terror exists there has been evolved entirely from their own morbid imaginations, fed by sensational propaganda from opponents of the party now in power. As a purely British organization, the Blackshirts will respect those principles of tolerance which are traditional in British politics. They have no prejudice either of class or race. Their recruits are drawn from all social grades and every political party. Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King's Road, Chelsea, London, S.W." (9)

Norah Briscoe also found articles that supported Adolf Hitler. As a result of this investigation "Jewish directors of Unilever... decided to present Harmsworth's owner, Lord Rothermere, with an ultimatum: if he did not stop backing Mosley, they and their friends would stop placing advertisements in his papers. Rothermere gave in." However, as Paul pointed out, her investigation involved her "reading almost everything favourable that had been written recently about Mosley and his Blackshirts. What she read, she liked." Norah handed in her notice at Uniliver and decided to become a pro-fascist freelance journalist.

In 1935 Norah Briscoe introduced Paul Briscoe to Joseph Weyrich (Seppl). "I saw him as an intruder and took an instant dislike to him. I resented this tall, dapper man with a studied smile and big eyes framed by round, black spectacles. I had been used to being the centre of attention and getting my own way... Mother announced that Seppl had invited us to come to Germany, and Seppl told me he would soon make a man of me." (10) Over the next eighteen months they spent living out of a suitcase. (11)

While in Nazi Germany Norah met Molly Hiscox, "a pretty woman in her late twenties who organised German holidays for English Fascist sympathisers". They soon became very close friends. "Neither of us liked the unfair anti-German talk that was increasing in intensity in England... True, Austen Chamberlain had just returned from a visit to announce that Germany was 'one vast arsenal'. What of it? Must they not take proper precautions to protect themselves? But weren't the majority of its inhabitants - and Molly travelled widely in Germany and saw them for herself - enjoying life as they hadn't enjoyed it for many years, with good roads to drive on in their cheap and well made little cars, a freedom from industrial troubles, a decrease in violence, a return to sanity and security, in fact? They were borne on an upsurge of hope and confidence, freed from the long, lingering misery of defeat, we agreed... In the meantime, we listened to the tramp of marching soldiers in the streets at intervals, and found their triumphant songs and happy faces immensely heartening. Here was real joy through strength. We heard no menace in them, nor in the mock air-raids and blacked-out rehearsals that occasionally occurred. The Germans were realists." (12)

In the summer of 1936 Norah returned to England and left Paul with Seppl's family in Miltenberg. (13) Now aged six, Paul attended the local primary school. "Oma had kitted me out in lederhosen, bright braces and stout boots. With my shock of snow-blond hair, I made a convincing little Bavarian - until of course, I opened my mouth to speak... At half-past seven one soft September morning, Oma took me by the hand and led me across the Martplatz and down the lane to the Volksschule. When she left me at the door, I felt physically sick." (14)

On her return to London, Norah Briscoe went to live with Molly Hiscox at 50 Thornton Road, Streatham. Molly introduced Norah to her lover, Richard (Jock) Houston. According to Paul Briscoe: "Mother immediately fell under his spell. The fascination wasn't sexual, it was political. Jock, then aged 31, was a fanatical admirer of Hitler and a frenzied activist who fizzed with energy. Fast-talking, short-fused and histrionic, he was a house painter who had - as he frequently reminded people - pulled himself out of the gutter by his bootstraps. But if truth be told, he hadn't pulled himself very far. He was never more at home than when he was standing on an East End pavement on a soapbox, ranting at a crowd in the odd accent of a cockney who had spent much of his life in Glasgow. One of his techniques was to upturn a box on a busy corner and begin a speech to a one-man crowd that was in on the trick. The stooge would heckle, and the dialogue would descend into a shouting match; a crowd would gather, and Jock would have an audience."

Nora found his message appealing: "Jack told them what he told anyone who would listen: that he, they, and the nation were being kept down by an international conspiracy of Jews. The unemployed were told that the money that should be creating work for them was being hoarded by Jewish financiers, and that their jobs would be stolen from them by Jews from the only country that was dealing with the Jewish menace, Hitler's Germany... The analysis was crude, hateful and false - but Mother embraced it uncritically. It explained her own failure to flourish: the world had refused to acknowledge her as special because the world was controlled by an elite to which she could never belong. Mother was one of many to find the theory of fascism credible and seductive. It offered dignity to the disappointed, allowing them to see themselves as wronged rather than unlucky or inadequate. Hitler sold these ideas to a Germany that had been humiliated in the recent war; Jock, and others like him, peddled them to Englishmen robbed of jobs and self-respect in the subsequent peace." (15)

Nora Briscoe now became a supporter of Sir Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Her son later wrote that "The fascist cause became an obsession. She talked of little else. The Jews were parasites conspiring to destroy western civilisation and engineering a war that had to be stopped... Mother had found a flag that offered her the recognition she felt was hers by right and which had been denied her by her family and by society." (16)

During this period Nora became friends with Dr Leigh Vaughan-Henry, the head of the National Citizens' Union. "Mother formed a particular admiration for Vaughan-Henry, who was the most educated and urbane person she had ever met. Eloquent and softly spoken in German, French and Italian as well as English, he was a poet and a composer, though his poems and compositions had brought him little recognition or fame... Like Mother, he saw himself as a frustrated artist. Fascism gave him a voice. He wrote about national culture for The Blackshirt and gave talks about music on German radio." (17)

In 1939 Vaughan-Henry wrote to Emil Van Loo, a leading fascist in the Netherlands: "This is to introduce you to a journalist friend and author, Mrs Briscoe... I think this would be a good opportunity for her to discuss with you your New Economic Order movement in Holland, especially as she is politically well-informed and ties up her interests in contemporary international matters to that in cultural developments, seen as components of the social and political whole. She is quite Jew-wise and aware of much of the machinations which are worked by international finance. You may find her views proceed further in the direction of totalitarianism than your own, as do my own ideas, as you are well aware." (18)

In April 1940 Leigh Henry was fined and bound over to keep the peace for six months. The charge was "using insulting words whereby a breach of the peace was likely" and the words in question were "disgusting and unbridled language against the Jews". He was described at the time as being "rabidly pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic".

Norah Briscoe and Molly Hiscox both became involved in the secret Right Club. It was established by Archibald Ramsay, the Conservative MP for Peebles and Southern Midlothian, in May 1939. The Daily Worker described Ramsay "Britain's Number One Jew Baiter". (19) This was an attempt to unify all the different right-wing groups in Britain. Or in the leader's words of "co-ordinating the work of all the patriotic societies". In his autobiography, The Nameless War, Ramsay argued: "The main object of the Right Club was to oppose and expose the activities of Organized Jewry, in the light of the evidence which came into my possession in 1938. Our first objective was to clear the Conservative Party of Jewish influence, and the character of our membership and meetings were strictly in keeping with this objective."(20)

Norah Briscoe, like other members of the Right Club, was opposed to going to war with Nazi Germany. Apparently, she booed Winston Churchill whenever he appeared on the cinema newsreels and started loud anti-war conversations in pubs. (21)

Unknown to Ramsay and Briscoe, MI5 agents had infiltrated the Right Club. This included three women, Joan Miller, Marjorie Amor and Helem de Munck. The British government was therefore kept fully informed about the activities of Ramsay and his right-wing friends. Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War the government passed a Defence Regulation Order. This legislation gave the Home Secretary the right to imprison without trial anybody he believed likely to "endanger the safety of the realm" On 22nd September, 1939, Oliver C. Gilbert and Victor Rowe, became the first members of the Right Club to be arrested. In the House of Commons Ramsay attacked this legislation and on 14th December, 1939, asked: "Is this not the first time for a very long time in British history, that British born subjects have been denied every facility for justice?" (22)

Anna Wolkoff, a member of the Right Club, and Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk from the American Embassy, were arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act. The trial took place in secret and on 7th November 1940, Wolkoff was sentenced to ten years. Kent, because he was an American citizen, was treated less harshly and received only seven years. Archibald Ramsay was surprisingly not charged with spying. Instead he was interned under Defence Regulation 18B. (23)

The New York Times reported: "Here was a man who was known to a wide circle of friends, many of whom seemed to be no better than himself, to be grossly disloyal to this country, and to be an associate, as he was, of thieves and felons now convicted. Captain Ramsay's whole picture of himself was of a loyal British gentleman, with sons in the Army, doing his best to help this country to win a victory in her life-and-death struggle. Captain Ramsay was, however, a man of no character and no reputation, and was perhaps very lucky only to be detained under the Defence Regulations." (24)

Norah Bruce was brought to the attention of the police when they received an anonymous letter: "Please investigate the right of a certain Mrs Briscoe to be in the Ministry of Information office. The woman has always been a Nazi propagandist, has a large circle of German friends and is to the best of my knowledge married to a German. She has a son by her first husband being educated as a German in Germany. I'm sorry I cannot sign my name as I'm afraid she may do some harm to my friends." (25)

This information was passed on to MI5. They kept a close watch on her activities. On 20th January 1941, Norah took a job as a typist in the Ministry of Supply. On 19th February she was promoted to the Central Priority Department. Most of its work was confidential and much of it secret. (26) Norah was now typing up sensitive documents about submarine bases and the shortage of spare parts. Apparently, she told a friend, "I get sight of such important official documents. When I come across a really hot one, I make a carbon copy and keep it in a folder in my desk." (27)

Norah joined forces with Molly Hiscox to get these documents to Nazi Germany. Molly put her in touch with one of her associates at the Right Club, a man in his twenties who was known to her as John. It has been suggested that this man was really Ferdinand Mayer-Horckel, a German-Jewish refugee. He in turn introduced her to a man named Harald Kurtz. Both men were in fact MI5 agents. (28)

Guy Liddell, director of counter-espionage at MI5, wrote in his diary that he had a meeting with Major Charles Maxwell Knight, head of counter-subversion unit B5(b): "The Norah Briscoe case is developing. M (Charles Maxwell Knight) is introducing a German agent and there is to be a meeting when he will get the documents. This case was first brought to my notice on Saturday. One of M's agents was asked to tea with Molly Hiscox, where he met Norah Briscoe, who is the wife or mistress of Jock Houston, the interned member of the BUF Briscoe said that she was working in quite an important section of the Ministry of Supply and that she had been copying all documents which she thought would be of interest. She is of German origin and has a son who is being brought up in Germany. She is now looking for some means of getting the documents through to the Germans." (29)

At meeting was arranged at a flat in Chelsea, Norah Briscoe handed over to Kurtz a collection of secret documents from the Ministry of Supply. Maxwell Knight and two members of Special Branch were in the next room and a few moments later they arrested the two women. (30) Briscoe and Hiscox appeared before the magistrate on 17th March 1941 on charges under the Treachery Act (1940). They were convicted and sentenced to five years penal servitude at the Central Criminal Court on 16th June 1941. (31)

After the case Liddell recorded in his diary: "Lunched with M. He told me all about the Briscoe case and showed me the documents. They are voluminous and cover a wide field. If the information had leaked it would certainly be a very serious matter. They relate to the location of factories, shortage of materials, establishment of submarine bases in Northern Ireland, etc. (32)

Norah Briscoe was released from Holloway Prison in the summer of 1945. At the end of the Second World War the occupying British Army made contact with the 15 year-old Paul Briscoe. In October 1945 he was told that he had half an hour to pack: he was going "home" to a country "whose language he had long forgotten and to a mother he had not heard from for four years". (33) At first he refused to go: "I thought of Hildegard as my mother, and with Seppl gone, it was my duty to look after her." (34)

Paul went to stay with Norah who was living with Molly Hiscox and Richard Houston in South Norwood. "I never met anyone so full of himself... Mother and Molly were obviously in awe of him... I felt no affection for the Mother that had reclaimed me, but I could see that she was genuinely proud of me. I was grateful for that." (35)

In 1946 Norah began working for John Middleton Murry, the literary critic and editor of the pacifist journal. Norah and Paul went to live with Murry at Lodge Farm, Thelnetham, Suffolk. (36) Paul enjoyed his time with Murry on his commune but his mother decided to leave in 1947 to take up a new post as assistant matron in a Land Army hostel. "It was strange how difficult we renegades found it to confront the mild, gentle man, and the puzzled, sadly accusing eyes, to tell him the unpalatable truth: that his free society felt remarkably like a prison to us, from which we must escape or die." (37)

In 1948 Norah Briscoe's novel, No Complaints in Hell was published. The book, which was based about her experiences in prison, It received mixed reviews: "Most praised its realistic description of prison life, but described the characterisation as functional and flat." Paul believed that the novel was deeply flawed because although she "was beginning to understand other people, she had not yet learned to understand herself." (38)

Paul Briscoe become a pacifist. However, his attempt to plea conscientious objection in 1949 was rejected and had to do his National Service. (39) He was sent to Germany where his knowledge of the language was put to good use: "I was assigned to Field Security, put in civilian clothes and sent to listen in on political meetings. I wasn't any better at spying than Mother. I was identified as a foreigner at a gathering of old Party comrades in Bad Harzburg and was lucky to get away before I was lynched. The same thing happened at a Communist rally in Hamburg, when I was rescued by being bundled into a jeep by the Military Police." (40)

After demobilisation he repaired historic buildings for the Ministry of Works. In 1956 he married Monica Larter, an infant schoolteacher. Inspired by his wife's profession he did a two-year teacher training course and in 1960 he began teaching woodwork in a secondary modern school in Essex. He later taught German in a schools in Suffolk. (41)

Monica gave birth two children, Catherine and Robert. Norah Briscoe, who was now suffering from Bell's Palsy, moved in with the family. "She stayed with us for the last thirty years of her life, living contentedly on the edge of our family and social circles, becoming known and liked as a spirited, independent-minded character who travelled the countryside on her bicycle until well into her eighties. She loved telling our children and our visitors stories of her life and adventures, but she never spoke of her crime or its punishment, and she fell silent whenever anyone mentioned the war." (42)

In 1993 Norah Briscoe suffered a series of minor strokes that left her needing constant nursing care and was placed in a home near Saxmundham: "Monica and I visited her almost daily,but visits were difficult: she suffered frequent hallucinations, and would talk about strange things that only she could see... After a few months of this, she had another stroke that robbed her of the power of speech. At first, she was distressed and frustrated, but after only a few days, she seemed to accept her condition and put up with it bravely." (43)

Adolf Hitler's Early Life (Answer Commentary)

Heinrich Himmler and the SS (Answer Commentary)

Trade Unions in Nazi Germany (Answer Commentary)

Adolf Hitler v John Heartfield (Answer Commentary)

Hitler's Volkswagen (The People's Car) (Answer Commentary)

Women in Nazi Germany (Answer Commentary)

The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (Answer Commentary)

The Last Days of Adolf Hitler (Answer Commentary)

(1) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 13

(2) The Daily Mail (21st April, 2007)

(3) Norah Briscoe, Daemons and Magnets (unpublished)

(4) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 19

(5) The Daily Telegraph (20th August, 2010)

(6) The Daily Mail (21st April, 2007)

(7) Norah Briscoe, Daemons and Magnets (unpublished)

(8) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 28

(9) Lord Rothermere, The Daily Mail (22nd January 1934)

(10) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 28

(11) The Daily Telegraph (20th August, 2010)

(12) Norah Briscoe, Daemons and Magnets (unpublished)

(13) The Daily Mail (21st April, 2007)

(14) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 44

(15) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) pages 63-65

(16) The Daily Mail (21st April, 2007)

(17) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 70

(18) Dr Leigh Vaughan-Henry, letter to Emil Van Loo (6th June, 1939)

(19) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 71

(20) Archibald Ramsay, The Nameless War (1955) page 105

(21) The Daily Mail (21st April, 2007)

(22) Archibald Ramsay, House of Commons (22nd September, 1939)

(23) Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right (1983) page 370

(24) New York Times, (25th July, 1941)

(25) Anonymous letter sent to Scotland Yard (May, 1940)

(26) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 118

(27) The Daily Mail (21st April, 2007)

(28) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 119

(29) Guy Liddell, diary entry (13th March, 1941)

(30) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) pages 128-129

(31) Julie V. Gottlieb, Femine Fascism: Women in Britain's Fascist Movement (2003) page 287

(32) Guy Liddell, diary entry (17th June, 1941)

(33) The Daily Telegraph (20th August, 2010)

(34) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 169

(35) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 184

(36) The Daily Telegraph (20th August, 2010)

(37) Norah Briscoe, Daemons and Magnets (unpublished)

(38) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 199

(39) The Daily Telegraph (20th August, 2010)

(40) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 204

(41) The Daily Telegraph (20th August, 2010)

(42) Paul Briscoe, My Friend the Enemy: An English Boy in Nazi Germany (2007) page 209