What do P.J. Wodehouse, Ezra Pound and William Joycy have in common?
They were all accused of treason on account of radio broadcasts in World War II. William Joyce (a.k.a. ‘Lord Haw-Haw’) broadcast German propaganda to Britain. After the war he was convicted of treason and hanged (He was the last person to be executed for treason in the UK). Ezra Pound broadcast Fascist propaganda from Italy. After the war he was taken to the US and indicted for treason, but adjudged insane and committed to an asylum, from which he was released in 1958. P G Wodehouse, the creator of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, was detained in Germany during the war and accepted an invitation to broadcast to the US. His broadcasts, unlike Joyce’s and Pound’s, were in no way treasonable (he was just very naive), but the Nazis exploited them for propaganda purposes. Therefore he was widely condemned as a traitor in the UK and there were calls for him to be brought to trial. He was arrested in France after his release from Germany in 1945, but the fuss blew over and there was no actual trial
