Harold Waring

In the short story The Stymphalean Birds, Harold Waring is a young and successful British politician. By the age of thirty he had become under-secretary of a government ministry and the Prime Minister himself had said that he would go far. While holidaying at a hotel at Lake Stempka in Herzoslovakia, Waring fell foul of some "Stymphalean Birds", two scheming women who blackmailed him by taking advantage of his generally friendly nature and inability to understand European languages.