Henry Hemming is the author of the new book The Ingenious Mr. Pyke: Inventor, Fugitive, Spy. He has written four other books, including Misadventure in the Middle East and In Search of the English Eccentric. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph. He lives in London.
Q: How did you learn about Geoffrey Pyke, and why did you
decide to write a book about him?
A: It was while researching an earlier book, one about
English eccentrics, that I first came across Pyke. I was intrigued - by the way
he saw the world as much as anything else. I went on to read the bestselling
book he wrote aged 21 and then looked up a short biography of him from the
1950s.
What drew me in was not just the way his mind worked -
ingenious and fascinating if at times self-destructive - but a reference at the
very end of this biography to a stash of personal papers Pyke had left behind,
many of them still untouched.
Just as I gained access to these, by a wonderful
coincidence, the British Security Service, MI5, decided to release most of
their material on Pyke. According to this, during World War II Pyke may have
been a senior Comintern official reporting to Moscow codenamed Professor P.
From that moment, I was hooked.
Q: What exactly was Pyke’s role during World War II, and
what were his attitudes toward the Soviet Union during the 1930s and ‘40s?
A: During the war Pyke was taken on as Director of
Programmes in Combined Operations by the swashbuckling Lord Louis Mountbatten,
grandson of Queen Victoria. Pyke's appointment to Combined Operations was later
described as one of the most unusual of the entire war. MI5 certainly agreed
with this.
As for Pyke's attitude towards the Soviet Union, I don't
want to give away too much about what he was up to, suffice to say that from
about 1933 he declared himself to be a devout anti-Fascist and we know that he
devoted most of the rest of his life to defeating Fascism.
Q: What was Pyke’s relationship to Judaism?
A: Complex. Growing up, he associated Judaism with his
mother's deeply conservative approach to the world, that and the terrible
bullying he experienced at a traditional English boarding school where his
mother had insisted that he be treated by staff as the school's only observant
Jew. I'd say there was also a part of him that loathed the idea of being hemmed
in by any inherited identities.
But later on in life he embraced the Jewish part of his
cultural background without ever becoming religiously observant. He was, as the
joke goes, not so much a Jew as Jew-ish.
Q: What is Pyke’s legacy today?
A: Most obviously the U.S. Special Forces, as well as the
Canadian Special Forces. His work on pre-school education can still be felt in
British kindergartens today. He has a strong claim to bringing into the world
the concept of underwater pipelines used to transport oil. He was also one of
the founders of the Mass Observation movement and played a part in the shaping
the new NHS in Britain.
For me, however, his great legacy lies in his intellectual
approach to the world. This is what underpins the stories in The Ingenious
Mr. Pyke.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I've been commissioned by an L.A.-based producer to write
a screenplay, which I'm doing now, and I'm also working on a new biography of
the man who helped inspire the James Bond character “M,” the great MI5
spymaster and naturalist Maxwell Knight.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Nothing that's not in the book!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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