The Diamond Smugglers

The Diamond Smugglers (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

As of 4 April 2025, 11:13 (UTC), this page is active and open for discussion. An FAC coordinator will be responsible for closing the nomination.
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Nominator(s): SchroCat (talk) 14:47, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As well as his Bond stories, Ian Fleming published two works of non-fiction. This was the first of them, The Diamond Smugglers, which is about, well, diamond smuggling out of Africa. I was fascinated by the book when I first read it, partly because it covers activity around where I spent much of my early life, Yengema, Sierra Leone and it still holds more interest for me than it will do for most people who read it. This has been through a rewrite recently, with as many sources are available being squeezed for as much as can be. All constructive comments are welcome. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 14:47, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support from MSincccc

Background
Synopsis
  • Collard explained that the IDSO was set up at the instigation of the Chairman of De Beers, Sir Philip Oppenheimer... It should be "chairman" here.
Images (suggestions)

After a second read through the article:

Synopsis
  • The Diamond Smugglers is the account of Ian Fleming's meeting with John Collard, ... Could "recounts" be used in place of "is the account of"?
Background
  • Fleming considered Collard to be a "reluctant hero, like all Britain's best secret agents"... Could "he" be used here since it is clear that Fleming is the other person and because he has been mentioned in the previous sentence?
  • He contacted Philip Brownrigg, an old friend from Eton and a senior executive of the diamond-trading company De Beers. Could "at" be used instead of "of" before "the diamond-trading..." since it is the more natural phrasing?

That concludes my lot. A fine article and an interesting read. MSincccc (talk) 17:58, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Support from Tim

  • "... The Sunday Times, that the paper may want to write a story" – as we're in the past tense I think this should be "might want"
  • "Plomer's made several comments" – typo?
  • "sanctioned by The Anglo American Corporation"| – I don't think the capitalised definite article is right here.
  • "Several reviewers thought that Fleming had authored a book" – "authored" for Heaven's sake? What's wrong with plain English "written"?

That's all from me. Tim riley talk 18:54, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about this but I've spotted something else: you are inconsistent about the piping for knights. We have Sir Percy Sillitoe unpiped and then Sir Philip Oppenheimer, piped and then, bless me!, Sir Percy Sillitoe, piped. I think including the "Sir" in the pipe is hugely preferable to excluding it: the prose is so much smoother to the eye that way. Tim riley talk 15:32, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Happy to support. The article meets all the FA criteria in my view. Tim riley talk 15:35, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks - and your afterthought has now been sorted too. Cheers - SchroCat (talk)

Image review

Thanks, Nikkimaria.
DiamondSmugglersCover: Link replaced and FUR beefed up
Sierra_Leone_miners_panning: The current US administration has cancelled USAID (which was the source site) and taken down the website, which is unfortunate on several levels. There is no archive copy of the page it came from either, which is more problematic (as far as this FAC is concerned, anyway) and the USAID site on Internet Archive isn't the easiest to navigate without a live search facility.
I've added a replacement (File:Aw (2).jpg), if you could check that. also I'll have a hunt through my photo albums from the 1970s to see if I can find any shots of Sierra Leonean miners which I can replace it with. - SchroCat (talk) 09:04, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
New image is fine. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:50, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Brilliant, thank you. - SchroCat (talk) 02:49, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

750h

Coming soon. 750h+ 13:15, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

lead
  • i think Africa, where, it was estimated, £10 million worth could be changed to "Africa, where it was estimated that £10 million worth", i think the commas make it harder to read
  • Fleming was better known as the author of 'was' or 'is'? i mean he is still known for the James Bond series.
  • the subject was an interesting one and ==> "the subject was interesting and"
synopsis
  • The book takes the form of narrative by Fleming should this be "of a narrative"?
background
  • William Plomer for proof-reading, as he did is proof-reading not usually one wo??rd
publication and reception
  • which leads to something that is "very entertaining reading". "something that is" seems redundant
attempted film adaptation

As always great article @SchroCat:! Happy to support once my above concerns are addressed. I do have an open FAC on an actor that could use one prose review if you're able. Thanks, 750h+ 13:30, 22 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

UC

Lovely article -- the usual nitpicks below. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:18, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved
  • First edition cover: hyphen in first-edition (compound modifier: we mean that it's the cover of the first edition, not that it's the first cover of an edition).
  • Is it worth saying in the lead that Collard was also an ex-spy? We get a vague hint due to Sillitoe's connection with the International Diamond Security Organisation, but otherwise he comes out from the lead as a corporate type in a suit.
  • £10 million in 1957 is approximately equivalent to £304,531,780 in 2023: false precision here: round the second figure to 2sf, like the first.
  • The book takes the form of a narrative by Fleming of where the two men met, interspersed with the interview between Fleming and Collard: I found this a little ambiguous. Does "where the two men met" mean "the place where the two men met", or "the first meeting between the two men"?
  • Collard relates how he was recruited into the IDSO by Sir Percy Sillitoe—the ex-head of MI5, the UK's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency—under whom Collard had worked: under whom he had worked? It would be worth, I think, giving the capacity in which C. had worked under S., if known (was he his gardener?).
  • Portuguese West Africa, the Gold Coast and Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania).: seems odd to only give the modern equivalent of one out of these three defunct countries, and a careless reader might assume that all three are now in Tanzania.
  • Collard relates a number of illustrative vignettes concerning the diamond smuggling cases he and the organisation dealt with.: not totally sold on illustrative under WP:PLOTCITE (we can't tell, purely on the authority of the source itself, that its contents are illustrative, interesting etc). Any chance of an example or two here, if only to pad out this rather short paragraph?
  • When not on holiday or dealing with his novels, Fleming was on the staff of The Sunday Times: I assume the Sunday Times didn't sack him during his holidays, so presumably this should be in addition to or similar? What's a "foreign manager" in this context?
  • Hamilton offered the story to Fleming: slightly ambiguous: this can mean either offered Fleming the chance of writing the story or offered Fleming the finished story to publish. It becomes obvious soon enough which is meant, but a rephrase would be beneficial.
  • the department of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, responsible for counter-intelligence.: the comma in the middle should go. If we're going to explain what MI5 is, I think we need to explain what Operation Overlord was
  • File:Aw (2).jpg: I think the caption should make clear that this was taken in 2011; it may well be that things haven't changed much in diamond mining in over half a century, but the reader should be given that context.
  • Fleming spread a story around the English-speaking society: this reads like they were a club; community?
  • Fleming spread a story around the English-speaking society at Tangier that Collard was an expert on the coelacanth and that they were writing a news story about the fish.: I wonder what the news would have been, given that the big story on the fish (that it wasn't extinct) was 20 years old?
  • Plomer made several comments on the manuscript, including marking two passages he thought needed to be reworked because they may have included a potential libel.: this is correctly worded as long as it's the same potentially libellous statement -- otherwise, potential libels or potentially been libellous. Any idea who was the "victim" -- or indeed what the libel was? I assume that all involved are no longer eligible to sue.
  • Sillitoe provided an introduction to the book, but as this was not sanctioned by the Anglo American Corporation,: I think we need to explain what the Anglo American Corporation was doing signing off on this.
  • Fleming was disappointed in the final product and in his personal copy of the book, he wrote "It was a good story: this is a letter, isn't it? I think that would be useful context (ie, he didn't write it in the Sunday Times or a similarly public place), as would the identity of the recipient.
  • The Diamond Smugglers was published in the UK on 29 November 1957 by Jonathan Cape: I think we need to add in book form, as we've just said that it was published (mostly, anyway) in serial form a little earlier.
  • Note g (the conversion of 2s 6d) should be moved back to the previous sentence.
  • By our calculations, the US version of the book was about twice the price (in real terms) of the UK edition. That seems odd to me: I wonder if we're getting odd results by using two different measures of equivalence?
  • No it wasn't. The exchange rate was about $2.8 to the £ in the late 50s, so £20 would have been about $55 or so (or $40 was around £14) - SchroCat (talk) 19:55, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • The exchange rate isn't the issue here, as we've inflated both to present-day prices: we have 12 shillings in 1957 is approximately equivalent to £20 in 2023 (NB that this is slightly less than the price given in the article of 12 and a half), then $3.50 in 1957 equates to approximately $40 in 2024. Google gives $40 today as about £30 (at $1=£0.78), so the difference isn't huge, but it does seem to imply that books were a lot more expensive in the USA than in the UK, which seems counterintuitive. UndercoverClassicist T·C 19:58, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      • I've added the 6d (although it doesn't change the output). There's not much we can do about the implication though. The conversions are slightly blunt instruments, but they are better than not having them at all. - SchroCat (talk) 21:11, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Michael Crampton, writing for The Sunday Times, who thought it an "exciting and richly fascinating account" and : comma after the quote, as we've got one before it.
  • The Times Literary Supplement obtained the services of the Earl of Cardigan to review the book... why him? As far as I can tell, he was vaguely literary and vaguely adventurous, but there must have been many people that fitted that description to choose from.
  • Several reviewers thought that Fleming had written a book that, while "ringing true as fact, is at the same time as highly entertaining as any fiction", as Crampton described it: this is cited only to Crampton: does Crampton explicitly support the first part?
  • Kingsley Amis was also hired as a story consultant; in a letter to the author Theo Richmond: Amis is pretty well known among those who are into books, but I'm not sure he's famous enough so as to need no introduction, given that we're giving one to Richmond in the same sentence, and one to just about everyone else in this paragraph.

The expansion to the synopsis was a good move, I think -- it's now much easier to get a sense of what's actually in the book, and why it's of interest.

  • Now that we've got a selection of the vignettes, would you have any objection to cutting "illustrative", in the interests of showing rather than telling (and MOS:PLOTCITE)?
  • (Moving down, as this has now developed} Fleming had struggled to make the dull operations interesting: Now that we have some of those operations, I think it's difficult to take dull as an objective assessment. Could we rephrase this to something like "he considered the operations described to be dull in nature, and that Fleming had struggled to make them interesting"?
  • Collard discussed the investigation in Liberia, a country that neighboured the diamond-rich Sierra Leone, while Liberia had none, but was a huge diamond exporter – all of which had been illegally mined in Sierra Leone and smuggled out: this sentence needs to be split up and reworked: at present, the grammar is quite wonky.
Support: all looks good, and thank you for your patience with the various tweaks. UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:20, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Wehwalt

  • Is the connection "background material" with Diamonds are Forever worth mentioning in the lead? I seem to remember some depictions of diamonds being secreted by the miners in the book.
  • "the IDSO visited the mine and undertook geological surveys of the region to prove there was no viable mine." perhaps conclude "... there was no usable ore" or some such. Or simply state the mine was a sham.
  • "The Diamond Smugglers was one of only two non-fiction books published by Fleming; the second was the 1963 travelogue Thrilling Cities.[11]" This sentence feels out of place here, perhaps move to "Publication History".
  • "Sillitoe suggested to Denis Hamilton, the editor of The Sunday Times, that the paper might want to write a story on the IDSO," The paper is the writer? Reads oddly.
  • "Fleming worked on the manuscript over the summer of 1957. He sent proof copies to the chairmen of De Beers and Selection Trust—the owner of several West African mining companies. Some minor changes were requested but they were generally happy with the results. Sillitoe telephoned Fleming shortly afterwards, as he had been contacted by the diamond companies and come under pressure for changes to be made." I had assumed "they" was DeBeers and Selection Trust but the final sentence quoted led me to doubt that.
  • "Sillitoe provided an introduction to the book, but as this was not sanctioned by the Anglo American Corporation—De Beers's parent company—it was not published and Collard wrote one instead.[25][29][f]" Given the innate ambiguity of "sanctioned", I might say "approved" or some such, if I'm reading this right.
  • "The Times Literary Supplement obtained the services of the Earl of Cardigan to review the book." Why such a long form? Presumably each of the other papers you cite obtained the services of their reviewers? Should we be impressed by the coronet?
That's it. Very interesting.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:44, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Cheers Wehwalt; all dealt with bar one. - SchroCat (talk) 19:36, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I gather that's the noble lord. That's fine. Support. Wehwalt (talk) 19:38, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

Can I ask for some information about "The Story of De Beers"? I wonder according to which criteria some sources have Internet Archive links and others don't. Pretty sure I reviewed most other sources already in other FACses. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:55, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What sort of information do you want about it? (If it's too in depth, I'll have to go back to the British Library, which is where I consulted it for this)
I've linked all the versions of the books that are both available on IA and which are the same editions as the ones I used (I've erred previously in linking to the wrong edition and the page numbers were all different from the hardcopy version I used!). Thanks for picking this up. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 10:11, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly reviews or things that establish its reliability. I tend to look for sources that cite this one. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:14, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's used as a source in the following academic articles:
  • Newbury C. "The Origins and Function of the London Diamond Syndicate, 1889-1914". Business History. 1987;29(1):5-26. doi:10.1080/00076798700000001
  • Newbury C. "Technology, Capital, and Consolidation: The Performance of De Beers Mining Company Limited, 1880–1889". Business History Review. 1987;61(1):1-42. doi:10.2307/3115773
  • Bergenstock, Donna J., and Maskulka, James M. The De Beers Story: Are Diamonds Forever? no. 3, May 2001, pp. 37–44. JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.31636478. Accessed 2 Apr. 2025.
  • Chapman, S. D. “Rhodes and the City of London: Another View of Imperialism.” The Historical Journal, vol. 28, no. 3, 1985, pp. 647–66. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2639143. Accessed 2 Apr. 2025.
  • Knight, John, and Heather Stevenson. “The Williamson Diamond Mine, De Beers, and the Colonial Office: A Case-Study of the Quest for Control.” The Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 24, no. 3, 1986, pp. 423–45. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/160350. Accessed 2 Apr. 2025.
Also on this article by the Gemological Institute of America. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 11:58, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Seems OK then. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:59, 3 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Allikas: Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/The_Diamond_Smugglers/archive1
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