He wasn't needed because Dion Fortune was on the case.However, since the git couldn't be bothered to turn up in 1940
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dion_Fortune
On the question of Waugh's imaginative version of history, the comet business certainly takes the biscuit at first glance. I'm guessing it's a fevered version of this story.From October 1939 through to October 1942, Fortune organised group meditations every Sunday with the intent of focusing Fraternity members towards the cause of peace. In February 1940, she undertook a visualisation in which she imagined angelic forces patrolling Britain's coast, believing that in doing so she was helping to make these forces a reality. She urged Fraternity members to repeat a mantra every time the German Luftwaffe began bombing Britain, through which she hoped to call upon "Invisible Helpers" from the "Inner Planes" to aid the people affected.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/scie ... 99093.html
Actually the really mad bit, which seems to be entirely made up in Waugh's head is the assertion that:A close shave with a comet nearly 1,500 years ago caused a catastrophic change in the global climate, leading to famine, plague, the end of the Roman Empire, the birth of the Dark Ages and even the legend of King Arthur, a leading British scientist said at the British Association meeting in London yesterday.
I have an interest in the Druids both as historical reality and as the source of an enduring theme in various iterations of Celtic revival, and I can't say I've ever come across this bizarre idea. As most people know, the Romans regarded the Druids as cruel and barbaric in their practices, which forms a standard ingredient in dramatic portrayals of the Roman conquest. (See 'Britannia' for a contemporary version) The idea of patrician families sending their youngsters to a hostile barbarian culture at the edge of the world would surely seem unlikely to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the period.the nobility of Rome sent their children to be educated in the Druidic universities.