Chris - getting off topic here but did the book 'The Man Who Never was' mention a pub in Wales and if so why? My wife and I have seen the film countless times and Major William Martin was portrayed as coming from Scotland. (His true origins are somewhat dubious) and in the film they do not venture into Wales. I'd be fascinated to know.
Regards
AJ
The film is not accurate - one of the criticisms of it is that it was partly based on a different earliier book by Duff Cooper, but the book by Ewen Montagu, who was actually involved, is more accurate. (The sequences at the end of the film where the Nazi agent investigates, are pure fiction.)
Glyndwr Michael is not mentioned in the book out of respect to his family, but he was an alcoholic from South Wales who died in London in 1943, hence the convenient body. I have heard a theory that some other person may have been the real corpse, but the point is that Glyndwr Michael was used as the basis for the fictional William Martin.
In the book Montagu says that he chose the birthplace of Cardiff at random, but it's very near Michael's birthplace of Bargoed. In the effects that were placed in the body's clothing there was a letter purporting to be from his father John Glyndwr
! Martin, and that is written on the notepaper of the Black Lion, Mold. That established the Welsh connection, but I think someone involved must have had some of the stationery - who doesn't "borrow" stuff from their hotel room?
The Scottish connection comes from the body being taken up to the Clyde where it was to be taken aboard a submarine. The book has photographs of this sequence of events.
I remember the Black Lion being a pub and hotel, but it's long closed - it's now a branch of the Halifax and a shop. Chris