Guy Gaunt: The Boy from Ballarat Who Talked America Into the Great War

by Anthony Delano

Guy Gaunt’s infiltration of America’s leadership changed the course of history. When the Great War began he was the British naval attaché in Washington, beached for recklessness at sea. Taking over a network of disaffected immigrants he thwarted all efforts by the powerful German-American establishment in the United States to stop America from supporting the Allies. The exposure of a sinister German underground showed President Woodrow Wilson that America could not remain neutral. The Foreign Office never forgave him for outclassing its fledgling Secret Service.

Toughened by early life in the turbulent Australian goldfields, Guy built a career by playing outside the rules. As well as dodging his way up the ranks of the Royal Navy, he married for money, snatched up a country estate, won a seat in Parliament and faked his disappearance to run off with the wife of the King’s doctor.

His half-dozen siblings also made their mark in the world. Stirring accounts of her intrepid solo journeys across West Africa and China made the oldest, Mary, a literary star. The youngest, Lucy, ran Australia’s first university college for women. Cecil became a colonel in a prestigious British regiment. Ernest, an admiral as Guy would also become, led his ships at the Battle of Jutland. Clive was the Crown Prosecutor of Burma, Lancelot a Singapore legal wizard. There was never a family like these Gaunts.

The others, however, could not outshine Guy. He was active again—new life, new wife—in World War II. But the Whitehall mandarins took a cruel revenge.

346 pages, Paperback

Published September 23, 2020

About the author

Anthony Delano went to London from Australia after an early newspaper career there and was soon a foreign correspondent for the Daily Mirror, which at that time sold nearly five million copies daily. He was stationed in Rome during the Dolce Vita days, in Paris when General De Gaulle was dismantling the French empire, then the United States where he covered, among many other dramas, the civil rights campaign and the assassination of President John Kennedy. Additional assignments took him all over the globe: wars in Africa and the Middle East, tours with the Queen and other members of the Royal Family; most hazardous of all, perhaps, the historic Beatles tour of America. In between there were executive stints in London. He was managing editor of the Mirror when the monstrous tycoon Robert Maxwell took it over. Clearly time to go. He began to teach journalism and research it academically, gaining first a Master’s degree at Queensland University of Technology then a PhD from the University of Westminster (his 2001 doctoral thesis, The Formation of the British Journalist 1900-2000, is widely cited). He became a senior lecturer, senior research fellow and finally visiting professor at the London College of Communication. He lives in the South of France, married to Patricia, a literary scholar.