This story I got from an old TV interview of Peter Ustinov. I have not verified it from other sources, but I suspect it is true, as I respect the veracity of Sir Peter. One evening in 1938 Peter Ustinov arrived home late from school. His father was in an agitated state. In a singular occurance he sent Peter to the cinema, even giving him money, suspiciously seeming wanting him out of the house. A few years later, Peter, who was in the Army during the war, asked his father about the evening. His father had been a Press Officer for the German Government and still had some contacts with the German General Staff. A meeting was arrainged via this back channel where General Officers who were in opposition to the Austrian Corporal now in charge of the government. It was now the time of the "Munich Conference" where both Britain and France gave Czechoslovakia away. In a desperate attempt to strengthen British opposition to this several German Generals traveled covertly to London and met in a secret location: the Ustinov family flat. The ploy did little to strengthen British governmental resolve: apparently the sincerity of the German Generals was discounted.
Well..don't know much but I'm sure for one thing that Ustinov explained somewhere (truely forgot) of that the 'cinema' incident, circa '38. His father was then one of the journalists working with the Wolff Bureau (later renamed as the German News), and as Ustinov asked his father regarding the meeting of that evening, his father told that one of 'visitors' was Gen Schweppenburg, the military attaché at the German Embassy in London.
Have you ever seen "The Way Forward"? I think Ihave the title correct. It starred David Niven with a cast of many supporting character actors. Snuck into the cast is a very young Peter Ustinov, playing a french-speaking cafeowner. Curiously enough he got double screen-credit, as he wrote the movie. This time of their lives has been immortalized in a novel by W.E.B. Griffin, where he included Niven and Ustinov as incidental characters in one of his novels.
One of my friends is an ardent admirer of Ustitov and he has one of Griffin's books, The Double Agent, though once I thought to borrow from him. However, he told me once that Ustinov and Niven's involvement in Operation Mincement, the book also telling of some good true facts. To him Griffin's is always a good read.
