Posted by Jock on February 20, 2006 at 09:23:39 from 87.105.81.146 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Flag at Beckfoot - which anniversary? posted by Peter Ceresole on February 20, 2006 at 00:13:10:
I suspect that was just a mistake. AR did a recce to establish the location, after the masts were up. They provided a nice touch for the return journey. It probably never entered his mind that at the moment in which he was setting the story, they weren't there.
You may very well be right. AR was not infallible. He wrote his books before the advent of MS Word and Google and, as we can see from the 1929/1930 timeline problem, he did make mistakes.
But the Bawdsey Radio Masts are not just a little detail. They would have been a significant navigational landmark which would have needed to have been added as a correction to the published charts at a specific time.
Completing the book in 1937, I see AR as deliberately warping time and adding the masts as a sinister symbol of the impending war.