A terrific association quartet, comprising the three volumes of Macaulay’s Letters and Smith’s biography, all inscribed by the author’s cousin, the WAAF photo intelligence officer, Constance Babington Smith.
Published posthumously and edited by Smith, Letters to a Friend (1961) and Last Letters to a Friend (1962) comprise Macaulay’s post-war correspondence with another “distant cousin”, the Revd J. H. C. Johnson, which played a key role in the author re-entering the Church of England in 1950 “after a long estrangement” (ODNB). The third volume, Letters to a Sister (1964), includes a selection of letters to Macaulay’s sister Jean, plus a fragment of Venice Besieged, the novel she was working when she died. Smith’s biography of her cousin appeared eight years later in 1972.
Constance Babington Smith MBE, FRSL (1912-2000) was an author and photographic interpreter for the RAF. Trained by its Photographic Development Unit, Smith worked in photo intelligence and, unusually for a WAAF, set up and led the Unit’s aircraft recognition section. From 1941 she was based at the Central Interpretation Unit (CIU) at RAF Medmenham, where she identified V1 flying bombs at Peenemünde, Germany. Her intelligence work was recognised by an MBE, awarded in 1945, and, a year later, the United States awarded her the Legion of Merit for her work with USAAF Intelligence.