ANNE SEBBA

Author Interview

Alexander Larman meets the journalist, biographer and historian to discuss Russian spies, Wallis Simpson and Winston Churchill’s mother

The biographer, journalist and historian Anne Sebba has tackled figures ranging from Winston Churchill’s mother to Wallis Simpson, and has done so with aplomb, wit and authority. And now, her latest book Ethel Rosenberg deals with perhaps her most hot-button topic to date, namely the innocence and martyrdom of the supposed Russian spy Ethel Rosenberg. We discussed all things historical, biographical and how she managed to change the well-worn narrative when it came to Mrs Simpson.

CHAP: Your most recent book, Ethel Rosenberg, is a revisionist account of the life and death of Ethel Rosenberg and her husband Julius. What first drew you to the subject?

SEBBA: I didn’t set out to be either revisionist or deliberately provocative but on the other hand I recognised there were several reasons why now, almost 70 years since the electrocution of the Rosenbergs, it was time to tell the story with fresh “My most significant new discovery is not a fact at all. It is my approach to the story – to separate Ethel from Julius for the first time, not to see them as ‘The Rosenbergs’. Julius clearly was a spy, however insignificant. Ethel was an individual who has been brutally denied her voice and her humanity, which I have tried to restore to her”

eyes. There are still people alive who will remember the event – one hopes – and yet it is far enough away to be less painful. If the proverbial dust has settled perhaps the issues can be discussed with

less bias and more calm perspective. But the idea for me to write this book arose specifically because my previous book, Les Parisiennes, contained the stories of some women who were spies, and there is something tantalising about women telling lies and behaving furtively. So I was asked if I could choose one of these women in Les Parisiennes and write a whole biography of this person. I remembered the ‘Ethel and her brother story,’ with which I was long familiar, having lived in New York for a few years. I had always believed that Ethel was not a spy but a hostage and was killed as a terrible miscarriage of justice. Surely it was time to take a fresh look at her story and see why she posed such a threat to traditional American values, and was accused of committing ‘a crime worse than murder’ – murdering the American way of life.

CHAP: Most people will be familiar with the Rosenbergs from the first line of The Bell Jar. Was this your own starting point when you were younger?

SEBBA: For many women who study English at school or university, it’s a key text. Sylvia Plath is a feminist icon and the powerful opening line of The Bell Jar is something many can quote by heart. But I discovered the novel as an adult. Its heroine, Esther Greenwood, is in many ways a parallel to Ethel’s story, although she’s not not based on Ethel, whose name was Esther Ethel Greenglass before she married Julius Rosenberg. The whole novel sums up so brilliantly not just Plath’s recent experience of electric shock therapy, which resonated with Ethel’s barbaric electrocution, but the madness of 1950s America.

CHAP: What were the most significant discoveries that you made in your research? Do you think that there are still documents locked within archives somewhere?

SEBBA: Any biographer who thinks theirs is the definitive version and nothing will ever appear again to shift that is delusional and arrogant. On the other hand, I suspect if the Russians had anything that

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

“I’d be thrilled to be remembered for doing my best to be honest and challenging. I suppose my discovery of 15 letters between Wallis and Ernest – the so-called ‘secret letters’, still pristine in their envelopes and intended for just one person to see, and not the world – remains the most important discovery I have made”

proved the Rosenbergs’ innocence it would have appeared by now. The FBI must have documents too, since so much was taken away at the time of the arrests. I think my most important discoveries in helping me understand the story were in Boston University, where I saw the correspondence between David and Ruth, which indicated they were passionate Marxists and needed little persuasion to help the Soviets, as well as the originals of the prison letters, which I have quoted from in my book.

Ethel’s prison letters reveal, I believe, not only what a strong, self-taught writer Ethel was but also that her primary focus in prison was how to guide her sons through life when she most likely would not be there for them. The letters are the incredibly moving testimony of a mother abandoned by her own birth family as well as large swathes of the American establishment, who believed in her guilt after a travesty of a trial. David’s Grand Jury testimony, released only in 2015, is yet another piece of recent evidence, showing that he lied and that his perjury was the only evidence that convicted Ethel.

My most significant new discovery is not a fact

at all. It is my approach to the story – to separate Ethel from Julius for the first time, not to see them as ‘The Rosenbergs’. Julius clearly was a spy, however insignificant. Ethel was an individual who has been brutally denied her voice and her humanity, which I have tried to restore to her. I think even if new evidence is revealed, showing her to be more active in her support for Julius, it won’t fundamentally change the story that she was convicted at the time on tainted evidence. She was not a saint but a loyal wife and she probably knew something and supported Julius. That was not a crime, let alone one punishable by death.

CHAP: E.L. Doctorow tackled the subject in 1971 in The Book of Daniel, albeit in fictionalised form. Was this book an important one for you, both in terms of approach and content?

SEBBA: The Doctorow book is a difficult if compelling read, but it’s actually unimportant in terms of content, as it is a novel. Its importance lies really in the fact that it appeared at the start of a long chain since Ethel’s death. This now includes playwrights such as Arthur Miller and Tony Kushner, who have all chosen to interpret Ethel’s story artistically. I think this shows why Ethel matters; there is an element of American society that is still uncomfortable with what it knows was a gross miscarriage of justice, and finds it necessary to look to artists and writers to make sense of how this great country could allow a woman against whom there was only shaky and weak evidence to be killed.

CHAP: Why do you think that Ethel’s story is still relevant today?

SEBBA: I always say if my book is about one thing it is about the importance of the rule of law, and when a country is prepared to overlook that and extinguish the life of one of its citizens because of fear, hysteria or mob rule, that is a dangerous moment still apparent in some places.

CHAP: Do you think that there have been any similar contemporary parallels in terms of Ethel-esque figures? Could such a miscarriage of justice happen again?

SEBBA: As a historian, I always say I hate counter factual history because there are too many variables. But the case of Nazanin ZaghariRatcliffe – while not at all the same – is indicative of how a state can play with a woman, by taking a woman who is a mother as hostage.

CHAP: Obviously, there will always be naysayers with a topic such as this, who would argue that Ethel deserved what happened to her. What is your response to these people?

SEBBA: Julius was a spy but that does not mean that his wife automatically was, just because, as I say in the book, she probably knew of his work and even approved of it. It is not a crime either to think or know something. The crime is to commit an overt act, and the overt act for which she was found guilty was a lie invented by her brother as part of his own plea bargain to spare him and his wife Ruth, who were spies. David has clearly admitted this. The KGB did not think Ethel was a spy. She had no code name and the cables subsequently called Venona stated she did not work. Even those who deciphered the Venona cables were quite clear that this meant she was not working as a spy, and even J Edgar Hoover did not think she should be killed. The deputy attorney general said ‘she

called our bluff’. Those who argue that she was a communist who risked the stability of the US and therefore deserved what happened to her, do not understand the importance of the rule of law which underpins the foundations of any secure democracy.

CHAP: Your previous books have explored everyone from Winston Churchill’s mother Jennie to the author Enid Bagnold. What are your criteria for finding a subject?

SEBBA: I’m not sure I really have one! It can’t be just anyone who fascinates you, since you must find publisher approval. Equally you must feel personally involved in the subject, since this will take over your life, so it is no good if someone else comes up with a subject for you. But I cannot really explain my process other than to realise how one subject seems to uncover or lead on a trail to another. For example, having written about one American woman who the establishment never understood, Jennie Churchill, I realised there was another who was even less understood, Wallis Simpson. And so on.

CHAP: Are there any topics that you have written about that you’d now like to revisit, either because new material has come to light or because you’ve changed your mind about some of your conclusions?

SEBBA: No, not really. I believe in the idea that the book I wrote was the best book I could write at that moment in time, given who I was and what I knew and what experiences I had had. Of course I have corrected factual errors, but to revisit? No; I shall leave that to new writers who will take a completely different approach.

CHAP: One of your best-known books, That Woman, was the definitive account of Wallis Simpson’s life. What do you say to people who think that you were too harsh on her?

SEBBA: Most people think I was too kind to her! I set out by trying to understand her, and discovered in the process that she was the one who was being hunted and wanted to give up Edward and stay with Ernest or even remain alone. But it was too late, as he would not let her go and she had lost Ernest by her own manipulations. My starting point with Wallis was that she was accused of being a Nazi, a whore, a gold digger and an adventuress. I couldn’t quite believe she was all those things at once. She is hard to like but deserves to be understood and, once you understand that Edward was the difficult, weak and childlike one, the whole story that people have always found so hard to understand because they argue she was not beautiful is turned on its head.

CHAP: You have been a member of PEN for some time and served on the management committee there. What were the challenges – and privileges – of your role there?

SEBBA: The privilege is to live in a country which believes in the rule of law. At the time I was there, serving on the Writers in Prison committee, I went to Turkey a few times to observe the trial of a young woman journalist in prison who faced the possibility of serving 12 years based on tainted evidence. Eventually she was released and now lives in Switzerland.

CHAP: A French journalist coined the phrase ‘La Méthode Sebba’ to describe your biographical techniques. What do you think that this means?

SEBBA: It’s a great compliment. But being a journalist is what led me to Wallis’ secret letters because I always look for people to interview. I flew off to Mexico and interviewed the son of Ernest Simpson, who had never given an interview before as he lives under another name. I started my working life as a journalist for Reuters and people are at the heart of what I do. Of course, you need to back up your findings with documents and letters and archives, and meeting Simpson’s son led me to the letters. But I am not an academic historian and try to write books that are both factually accurate and documented with source notes, but also readable.

CHAP: How would you like to be remembered?

SEBBA: I’d be thrilled to be remembered for anything, but ideally for doing my best to be honest and challenging. I suppose my discovery of 15 letters between Wallis and Ernest – the so-called ‘secret letters’, still pristine in their envelopes and intended for just one person to see, and not the world – remains the most important discovery I have made, since they really do change our understanding of Wallis’s mind at the time, and in addition they prove that her divorce from Ernest was collusive, therefore illegal in 1936 terms. Had they been read at the time, they would have prevented her divorce from Ernest going ahead. n