Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

family dining-room, which included a bar stocked with Coca-Cola (Hubbard's preferred drink), a
large lounge and a television room. Upstairs, Hubbard had his own suite comprising a sittingroom,
bedroom and bathroom, adjoining Mary Sue's office, bedroom and bathroom. The children
had bedrooms at the other end of the house and the 'Monkey Room', named after the murals
painted by John Spencer Churchill, was converted into a school-room and equipped with
trampoline. Apart from the kitchen, most of the remaining rooms in the manor were used as offices.
It was the first time that the Hubbards as a family had remained in one place for any length of time
and the children were particularly enchanted by Saint Hill Manor, with its maze of rooms and
sweeping grounds. At weekends the four of them could usually be found, muddy-kneed, exploring
the estate or paddling in rubber boots on the fringes of the lake; twice a week Diana and Suzette
attended dancing lessons at the local Bush Davies school.
Hubbard, too, liked to stroll the grounds at weekends, taking photographs with one or the other of
his new cameras. Photography was a recently acquired hobby and his framed pictures could be
found in many of the rooms at Saint Hill. Mainly landscapes and portraits, they were of course
universally praised, even those that were slightly out of focus.
All in all, visitors to Saint Hill at this time would have observed little amiss with the nice American
family who had taken up residence. Certainly no one would have guessed that Hubbard
possessed the dubious distinction of being probably the only owner of an English country house
under the continuous surveillance of the FBI. His file, Number 244-210-B, was much thumbed and
even included an interview with his first wife, Polly, by then re-married, who was able to say very
little except that her first husband was a 'genius with a misdirected mind'.
To some extent, the FBI's interest in Hubbard was a situation of his own making, for the frequently
intemperate bulletins and policy letters which flowed from Saint Hill in an endless stream for
distribution to Scientologists around the world were bound to generate the attention of J. Edgar
Hoover's staff. On 24 April 1960, for example, Hubbard issued a bulletin to US franchise holders
asking them to do everything in their power to deny the presidency to 'a person named Richard M.
Nixon'.