The London Cage

The London Cage examines the secret interrogation centre established in Kensington Palace Gardens in 1940 under Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Scotland. German prisoners considered resistant to ordinary questioning were brought to the Cage for intensive interrogation, while the organisation remained hidden from public view and outside the normal image of Britain’s prisoner-of-war system.

After Germany’s defeat, the Cage also became important in the investigation of suspected war criminals. Helen Fry uses archival evidence and material suppressed from Scotland’s original memoirs to reconstruct daily life, intelligence work and allegations of coercive treatment. The result is a nonfiction study of both the information sought by British intelligence and the unresolved ethical questions surrounding the methods used.