Tweet
Most Secret Agent of Empire by Taline Ter Minassian, book review:
Biography of a mysterious spy is an exercise in deception
The author's background leads to a post-structuralist interpretation of history
EDWARD WILSON
Friday 02 January 2015
Whatever happened in the Turkmenistan desert on the night of 20
September 1918 marked the end of Reginald Teague-Jones. Or did it?
Four years later, the spitting image of the vanished spy reappeared,
calling himself Ronald Sinclair. Teague-Jones was still under cover as
Sinclair at the age of 99 when he warned his nurse that "the
Bolsheviks" might yet "break down the garden door" to settle their
scores.
Teague-Jones, who hyphenated his name to disguise his humble Liverpool
origins, leaves few clues about his early life. One of the many
mysteries of Teague-Jones is how he ended up in St Petersburg at the
age of 13. One explanation is that well-off family friends took
Reginald to Petrograd as a companion for their son. When Teague-Jones
returned to England four years later, he was fluent in Russian, German
and French - and had already seen bloodshed during the 1905
Revolution.
St Petersburg improved Teague-Jones's social status, but not enough
for the Foreign Office. Instead, he found himself training to be a
colonial cop at the Punjab Police Academy. The budding spy began his
career with the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary police force
with only a dozen British officers. Their job was to control large
regions without the expensive intervention of regular troops - when
used, the soldiers nicknamed their punitive raids, "butcher and bolt".
The same region is now the target of drone strikes which, likewise,
have replaced the former, more costly operations. Nor have the tactics
of the other side changed. A 1914 intelligence report warns of "a
party of four Mahsuds dressed in uniforms of the South Waziristan
Militia" whose object was to take hostage a British officer.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Teague-Jones, disguised as
an Armenian merchant, travelled across Central Asia by mule and train,
gathering intelligence. He had the impossible job of assessing the
shifting alliances of a "complex tribal chessboard" which pitted
Bolsheviks against pro-Turks and tribal nationalists against both.
The notorious affair of the murdered commissars - which inspired a
1933 Soviet feature film wrongly demonising Teague-Jones as the
villain - grew out of these complexities.
The book itself is an exercise in deception. The cover photo, showing
a turbaned Teague-Jones as an Indian Army officer, suggests a
quintessentially British period piece. No one would guess that it was
originally written in French by a female historian of Armenian origin.
The author's grandfather, a Dashnak revolutionary, played a role in
the historical events described. Taline Ter Minassian's book owes
more to Foucault than Kipling or Marx. The heterogeneity of the
author's own background and her portrayal of the instabilities of
Central Asia have turned a ripping yarn of empire into a
post-structuralist interpretation of history.
The book boasts a superb collection of Teague-Jones's own photos, but
their sepia period tinge fades as the reader realises how much the
spy's life "illuminates present developments in the regions between
Russia, Central Asia, Transcaucasia, India, Pakistan and the Middle
East, the lands of the old and the new, Great Game". Tom Rees's
translation is a flawless flow that captures both nuance and
vernacular.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/most-secret-agent-of-empire-by-taline-ter-minassian-book-review-biography-of-a-mysterious-spy-is-an-exercise-in-deception-9952006.html
From: Baghdasarian
Biography of a mysterious spy is an exercise in deception
The author's background leads to a post-structuralist interpretation of history
EDWARD WILSON
Friday 02 January 2015
Whatever happened in the Turkmenistan desert on the night of 20
September 1918 marked the end of Reginald Teague-Jones. Or did it?
Four years later, the spitting image of the vanished spy reappeared,
calling himself Ronald Sinclair. Teague-Jones was still under cover as
Sinclair at the age of 99 when he warned his nurse that "the
Bolsheviks" might yet "break down the garden door" to settle their
scores.
Teague-Jones, who hyphenated his name to disguise his humble Liverpool
origins, leaves few clues about his early life. One of the many
mysteries of Teague-Jones is how he ended up in St Petersburg at the
age of 13. One explanation is that well-off family friends took
Reginald to Petrograd as a companion for their son. When Teague-Jones
returned to England four years later, he was fluent in Russian, German
and French - and had already seen bloodshed during the 1905
Revolution.
St Petersburg improved Teague-Jones's social status, but not enough
for the Foreign Office. Instead, he found himself training to be a
colonial cop at the Punjab Police Academy. The budding spy began his
career with the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary police force
with only a dozen British officers. Their job was to control large
regions without the expensive intervention of regular troops - when
used, the soldiers nicknamed their punitive raids, "butcher and bolt".
The same region is now the target of drone strikes which, likewise,
have replaced the former, more costly operations. Nor have the tactics
of the other side changed. A 1914 intelligence report warns of "a
party of four Mahsuds dressed in uniforms of the South Waziristan
Militia" whose object was to take hostage a British officer.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Teague-Jones, disguised as
an Armenian merchant, travelled across Central Asia by mule and train,
gathering intelligence. He had the impossible job of assessing the
shifting alliances of a "complex tribal chessboard" which pitted
Bolsheviks against pro-Turks and tribal nationalists against both.
The notorious affair of the murdered commissars - which inspired a
1933 Soviet feature film wrongly demonising Teague-Jones as the
villain - grew out of these complexities.
The book itself is an exercise in deception. The cover photo, showing
a turbaned Teague-Jones as an Indian Army officer, suggests a
quintessentially British period piece. No one would guess that it was
originally written in French by a female historian of Armenian origin.
The author's grandfather, a Dashnak revolutionary, played a role in
the historical events described. Taline Ter Minassian's book owes
more to Foucault than Kipling or Marx. The heterogeneity of the
author's own background and her portrayal of the instabilities of
Central Asia have turned a ripping yarn of empire into a
post-structuralist interpretation of history.
The book boasts a superb collection of Teague-Jones's own photos, but
their sepia period tinge fades as the reader realises how much the
spy's life "illuminates present developments in the regions between
Russia, Central Asia, Transcaucasia, India, Pakistan and the Middle
East, the lands of the old and the new, Great Game". Tom Rees's
translation is a flawless flow that captures both nuance and
vernacular.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/most-secret-agent-of-empire-by-taline-ter-minassian-book-review-biography-of-a-mysterious-spy-is-an-exercise-in-deception-9952006.html
From: Baghdasarian