[4] He served as an officer in the Hawke Battalion of the Royal Naval Division during the First World War, seeing action at Gallipoli and on the Western Front.

He advocated "real Toryism as opposed to the plutocratic Conservatism represented by the official party", under the relatively liberal leadership of Stanley Baldwin.

In addition, Jerrold, unlike his English Review colleague, the historian Sir Charles Petrie, was an imperialist who was opposed to Britain's policy in India, which had recognised the inevitability of self-rule.

[14] In a July 1933 article in the English Review, Jerrold argued that because of the threat of communism to Britain, "the forcible overthrow of Herr Hitler's administration would be a disaster".

Meetings were held over dinners at London hotels, where its leaders advanced a corporatist agenda and insisted that "the present democratic system of government must be changed".

[17] However, Jerrold was no Nazi and supported the efforts of Benito Mussolini to avenge the 1934 murder of Engelbert Dollfuss, which had been carried out in Austria by pro-Hitler forces.

[19] In his 1938 book The Future of Freedom: Notes on Christianity and Politics, Jerrold outlined his support for the pro-Catholic dictatorships of Franco and Mussolini.

The flight itself was planned over lunch at Simpson's-in-the-Strand, where Jerrold met with the journalist Luis Bolín, London correspondent of the ABC newspaper and later Franco's senior press advisor.