Adam Marshall Diston

Adam Marshall Diston (1893–1956; born in Scotland He had 'close affinities' serving in a Scottish regiment from 1914 to 1918. Later, however, he became involved with Oswald Mosley's New Party, running in the 1931 general election as the party's prospective parliamentary candidate for Wandsworth Central. He was also part of Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF), holding 'a high position in the Publicity Department'.

Churchill's ghostwriter In 1934, Churchill already had a number of newspaper and magazine writing commitments – Collier's, the News of the World, the Daily Mail – to which was added a regular column in the Sunday Dispatch. The editor of the newspaper, William Blackwood, wanted rights to Churchill's older material, which would be reworked by one of the Dispatch journalists, Adam Marshall Diston. When reworking older pieces, Diston would add original material: for example, when reworking an article on French, in the manuscript's first three pages only one paragraph was from Churchill's original article. Churchill would also give guidelines to Diston on what to include in articles and leave Diston to produce the piece. Diston probably ghostwrote the article for Churchill, for which Churchill paid him in full. According to Richard Toye, based on this string of events, 'Churchill was entirely happy to put the article out in his own name and thus take responsibility for the views it expressed'. In 1940 Charles Eade, Sunday Dispatch editor, who was republishing some of Churchill's older journalism, came across the article and approached Churchill on 7 March about publishing it,