Double Agent Celery: MI5's Crooked Hero

by Carolinda Witt, Nigel West (Foreword by)

Overview

With Britain braced for a German invasion, MI5 recruited an ex RNAS officer, come confidence trickster, called Walter Dicketts as a double agent. Codenamed Celery, Dicketts was sent to Lisbon with the seemingly impossible mission of persuading the Germans he was a traitor and then extract crucial secrets. Once there, the Nazis spirited him off to Germany. With his life on the line, Dicketts had to outwit his interrogators in Hamburg and Berlin before returning to Britain as, in the Nazis’ eyes, a German spy.

Despite discovering he had been betrayed as an MI5 plant before he even left for Germany, Celery somehow got back to Lisbon. After that he persuaded an Abwehr Officer to defect, and spent nine months undercover in Brazil.

A mixture of hero and crook, Dicketts was worldly and intelligent, charming and charismatic. Sometimes rich and sometimes poor, his private life was a web of complexity and deception. Using family and official records, police records, newspaper articles and memories, the author unravels the tangled yet true story of Double Agent Celery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526716163
Publisher:	Pen & Sword Books Limited
Publication date:	01/24/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	398,426
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Carolinda Witt is the granddaughter of MI5’s double agent celery aka Walter Dicketts. After growing up in Africa, she has sailed around the Caribbean, skied throughout the Alps, scuba-dived in the Pacific and, at the age of twenty-one, became one of the first female hot-air balloon pilots in Britain. In 1988 she flew the Virgin Jumbo Jet shaped balloon across Australia in the Trans-Australia balloon race. Following being co-owner of a successful medical supplies company, Carolinda developed a modern version of the popular anti-aging yoga routine known as ‘The Five Tibetan Rites’ now practised by thousands of people all over the world. She is the author of the bestselling T5T: The Five Tibetan Exercise Rites and The 10-Minute Rejuvenation Plan. She lives in Sydney, Australia.Carolinda Witt is the granddaughter of MI5’s double agent celery aka Walter Dicketts. After growing up in Africa, she has sailed around the Caribbean, skied throughout the Alps, scuba-dived in the Pacific and, at the age of twenty-one, became one of the first female hot-air balloon pilots in Britain. In 1988 she flew the Virgin Jumbo Jet shaped balloon across Australia in the Trans-Australia balloon race. Following being co-owner of a successful medical supplies company, Carolinda developed a modern version of the popular anti-aging yoga routine known as ‘The Five Tibetan Rites’ now practised by thousands of people all over the world. She is the author of the bestselling T5T: The Five Tibetan Exercise Rites and The 10-Minute Rejuvenation Plan. She lives in Sydney, Australia.

Table of Contents

Dramatis Personae viii

Abbreviations xii

Illustration: Walter Dicketts Family Tree xiv

Author's Note XV

Foreword xvi

Prologue xix

Chapter 1 A Fateful Meeting 1

Chapter 2 From Batteries to Spying 21

Chapter 3 About Turn 41

Chapter 4 A New Kind of Spy 56

Chapter 5 Loyal Rogue 74

Chapter 6 Parachutes and Dinghies 92

Chapter 7 Penetrate the Abwehr 108

Chapter 8 Escape From Germany 145

Chapter 9 Who to Believe? 159

Chapter 10 Aftermath 181

Chapter 11 South America Beckons 201

Chapter 12 A New Life 205

Chapter 13 Lost and Found 219

Postscript 228

Acknowledgments 229

Endnotes 235

Select Bibliography 258

Picture Credits 260

Index 263

Editorial Reviews

Double Agent Celery is the fascinating portrait of a man who was both hero and crook, fully capable of conning his way out of the most extraordinary situations, and highly recommended.

Midwest Book Review

Double Agent CELERY tells the complex, often convoluted story of a Double Cross agent who bravely served his country behind enemy lines and the families he left behind who only learned about him and each other after his death.

Studies in Intelligence