defence. Driberg was acquitted, and Beaverbrook's influence ensured that the case went unreported by the press. This was the first known instance of what writer Kingsley Amis called the "baffling immunity [Driberg] enjoyed from the law and the Press to the end of his days". In the latter part of the 1930s Driberg travelled widely: twice to Spain, to observe the Spanish Civil War, to Germany after the Munich Agreement of 1938, to Rome for the coronation of Pope Pius XII and to New York for the 1939 New York World's Fair. After the Nazi-Soviet Pact was announced in August 1939, he informed his readers that there would be "no war this crisis". Nine days later, after the German invasion of Poland precipitated the Second World War, he apologised for his mistake, and ended his first wartime column with the words "We're all in it". His opposition to the Nazi-Soviet Pact and his support for the war in September 1939 may have been the reason for his expulsion from the Communist Party in 1941. An alternative explanation, proffered later, is that he was reported by Anthony Blunt for passing information on the Party to Maxwell Knight of MI5. Driberg and Knight were long-standing acquaintances who met frequently and, among other things, shared a mutual interest in the works of Aleister Crowley. Driberg's mother had died in July 1939. With his share of her money and the help of a substantial mortgage, he bought and renovated Bradwell Lodge, a country house in Bradwell-on-Sea on the Essex coast, where he lived and entertained until the house was requisitioned by the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1940. He continued to write the Hickey column, not always to his editor's satisfaction; his protestations against indiscriminate bombing of German civilians were particularly frowned on. In November 1941, he went to America and was in Washington on Monday 8 December, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, to report President Roosevelt's speech to Congress announcing America's entry into the war. Early parliamentary career Independent Member for Maldon, 1942–45 When Driberg returned to Britain in March 1942 he found widespread public dissatisfaction with the government's conduct of the war. This mood was reflected in a series of parliamentary by-elections in which candidates supporting the wartime coalition government were defeated by Independents – the major parties had agreed to a pact under which they would not contest by-elections in