James Larratt Battersby was a British fascist and pacifist, and a member of the Battersby family of hatmakers of Stockport, Greater Manchester, England. He was forced to retire from the family firm due to his politics and was interned by the British government during the Second World War along with other British fascists. During his detention he came to believe that Adolf Hitler was Christ returned, and after the war wrote The Holy Book and Testament of Adolf Hitler. He committed suicide by leaping into the paddle wheels of a ferry.

The British Union of Fascists (BUF) was a British fascist political party formed in 1932 by Oswald Mosley. Mosley changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists in 1936 and, in 1937, to the British Union. In 1939, following the start of the Second World War, the party was proscribed by the British government and in 1940 it was disbanded.