There is no reason why you should have heard of Geoffrey Pyke. After his suicide in 1948 he was described as one of the great geniuses of his time, to rank alongside Einstein, yet he remains today, as The Times put it, one of the most original if unrecognised figures of the twentieth century.
Inventor, escapee, campaigner, war correspondent, Pyke was an unlikely hero of both world wars and is seen today as the father of the U.S. Special Forces. He changed the landscape of British pre-school education, earned a fortune on the stock market, wrote a bestseller and in 1942 convinced Churchill and Lord Mountbatten to build an aircraft carrier out of reinforced ice. He gave birth to the Mass Observation movement, escaped from a German concentration camp, devised an ingenious plan to get ambulances and microscopes to the Spanish Republicans for free and launched a private attempt to avert the outbreak of the Second World War by sending into Nazi Germany a group of pollsters disguised as golfers. But there was another side to this man. Pyke, it seems, was a man with a secret.
In 2009 MI5 released a mass of material suggesting that Pyke was in fact a senior official in the Soviet Comintern. In 1951 papers relating to Pyke were found in the flat of Cambridge Spy Guy Burgess after his defection to Moscow. MI5 had watchers follow Pyke through the bombed-out streets of London, his letters were opened and listening devices picked up clues to his real identity. Convinced he was a Soviet agent codenamed Professor P, MI5 helped to bring his career to an end.
It is only now, more than sixty years after his death, that Geoffrey Pyke's astonishing story can be told in full. Churchills Iceman is a many-faceted account of this enigmatic mans genius, and reveals him as one of the great innovators of the last century.
Number of Words in Auth: 2
Formats : EPUB
Number of Formats : 1
Has Cover : Yes
All Identifiers : goodreads:18517863, urnisbn/9781409052371:9781409052371
Single Author : Henry Hemming
Original Source : Mirc New Files 07 03
Sorted Author by LN, FN: Hemming, Henry
Title Length : 072
Title Parm D : Churchill's Iceman_The True Story of Geoffrey Pyke_Genius, Fugitive, Spy
Title Parm F : Churchill's Iceman
Title Parm G : Churchill's Iceman
Title Parm A : Churchill's Iceman_The True Story of Geoffrey Pyke_Genius, Fugitive, Spy
Title Parm B : (
Title Parm H : The True Story of Geoffrey Pyke_Genius, Fugitive, Spy
Record ID : 4121
Uncomma Author : Henry Hemming
Num of Aut : 1