The New Men by C.P. Snow

Those in the secret did not talk easily with each other, and as the months passed and Luke's ‘pile' went up, it was hard to judge how many believed in him. In committee heads were shaken, not much was said, yet feelings ran high. Luke was one of those figures who have the knack, often surprising to themselves, of stirring up controversy; people who did not know him, who had no conception of his surgent, exuberant, often simple-hearted character, grew excited about him, as someone who would benefit the country or as a scandalous trifler with public money, almost as a crook.

Of his supporters, the most highly placed of all was lost in the April of 1943, when Bevill was at last told that his job was wanted for another.