The Ingenious Mr. Pyke: Inventor, Fugitive, Spy

by Henry Hemming

Overview

The untold story of an enigmatic genius who changed warfare forever

In the World War II era, Geoffrey Pyke was described as one of the world's great minds -- to rank alongside Einstein. Pyke was an inventor, adventurer, polymath, and unlikely hero of both world wars. He earned a fortune on the stock market, founded an influential pre-school, wrote a bestseller, and came up with the idea for the US and Canadian Special Forces. In 1942, he convinced Winston Churchill to build an aircraft carrier out of reinforced ice.

Pyke escaped from a German WWI prison camp, devised an ingenious plan to help the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, 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.

And he may have been a Russian spy.

In 2009, long after Pyke's death, 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.

Henry Hemming is the first reporter to sift through this extraordinary new information and finally tell Pyke's astonishing story in full: his brilliance, his flaws, and his life of adventures, ideas, and secrets.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610397131
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	09/13/2016
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	508,391
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Henry Hemming is the author of five works of nonfiction including Agent M and The Ingenious Mr Pyke, which landed on the New York Times monthly espionage bestseller list. He has written for the Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, the Times, the Economist, FT Magazine, and the Washington Post, and has given interviews on Radio 4's Today Programme and NBC's Today Show and spoken at schools, festivals and companies including RDF Media, The RSA, Science Museum, Frontline Club, and The School of Life. Henry lives in London with his wife, daughter and son.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

Introduction 1

Part I

How to Become a War Correspondent 11

How to Escape 44

How to Become Invisible 67

Pyke Hunt, Part 1 99

How to Raise Your Child (and Pay for It) 114

Part II

How to Resolve an Epidemic of Anti-Semitism, a Royal Scandal and the Threat of Fascism 157

How to Prevent a War Pyke Hunt, Part 2 217

How to Defeat Nazism 235

Pyke Hunt, Part 3 256

How to Change the Military Mind 261

Pyke Hunt, Part 4 281

How to Succeed in America 295

Pyke Hunt, Part 5 324

How to Win the War with Ice 329

How to Survive 372

How to Live 386

Pyke Hunt, Part 6 407

Epilogue, or, How to Think Like a Genius 428

Notes 441

List of Illustrations 481

Acknowledgements 483

Index 485

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/16/2015
Geoffrey Pyke, described in his 1948 Times of London obituary as “one of the most original if unrecognized figures of the present century,” always seemed to find himself in the right place at the right time, as Hemming (Abdulnasser Gharem) documents in this masterful biography. In July 1914, with Europe on the verge of war, Pyke talked his way into a position with Reuters as special correspondent in Copenhagen. He was soon captured by the Germans and sent to the Ruhleben concentration camp, from which he escaped, writing a bestselling book about the experience. That alone makes for a riveting read, but Pyke’s story was far from over. Hemming details how Pyke also made lasting innovations in educational theory, criticized Nazi anti-Semitism, aided the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, convinced Winston Churchill that an aircraft carrier made out of reinforced ice was a good idea, and was suspected of being a Soviet spy. Hemming’s superlative text is nearly as nimble as Pyke’s mind, and he reveals who this remarkable innovator really was. B&w photos. (May)

Publishers Weekly

“It is as if [Geoffrey Pyke] had been invented by G. K. Chesterton and given posthumous fame by John le Carré - which underlines the extraordinary accomplishment of his actual biographer Henry Hemming.”—Sir Michael Holroyd

“Reads wonderfully like an adventure story…Hemming…turn[s] the story of a nerdish chameleon into a page-turner.”—Guardian

“[Pyke's] was not a lucky life but, in his biographer, he has gained a little bit of posthumous luck. This admirable and thoroughly enjoyable book should rescue a weirdly original and innovative talent from oblivion.”—The Sunday Times (London)

"Well-written…throws fascinating light on a forgotten hero of the Second World War."—The Independent (UK)

“[A] masterful biography…Hemming's superlative text is nearly as nimble as Pyke's mind, and he reveals who this remarkable innovator really was.”—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

“An unlikely tale of true espionage… Fans of Graham Greene and Alan Furst will revel in this well-told true-life story.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Biographer Henry Hemming makes Geoffrey Pyke a fascinating object of study.”—Columbus Post Dispatch

From the Publisher

04/01/2015
Journalist Hemming's (Misadventures in the Middle East) breezy biography of Geoffrey Pyke (1893–1948) is well-researched, containing multiple notes, yet also written in a casual tone with pop culture references throughout. The author paints a colorful picture of tall, gaunt, atheist, Jewish, possibly-a-spy Pyke's turbulent and fascinatingly contradictory life. Pyke audaciously planned to enter Germany in 1914 to get the scoop as a war correspondent for the British newspaper Daily Chronicle. He successfully sneaked in, was imprisoned, escaped with a spy, and had a heart attack, but made it back to England and ultimately Cambridge. While Pyke did not graduate from college, this never hindered his copious writing and inventing; his creations caught the imagination of Winston Churchill and the British military (as well as MI5) and led to Pyke's involvement in intellectual circles such the Bloomsbury Group and George Bernard Shaw devotees, one of whom he married. VERDICT Those fond of biographies and 20th-century European war tales told in a modern vein will enjoy this book.—Sara R. Tompson, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Lib., Archives & Records Section, Pasadena, CA

Library Journal

2015-03-11
An unlikely tale of true espionage by London-based journalist/historian Hemming (Abdulnasser Gharem: Art of Survival, 2012, etc.) in which a nerdy Jewish kid becomes a kind of James Bond. Geoffrey Pyke (1893-1948) found his calling in the face of Nazi Germany's official anti-Semitism. He did not forget that as a British POW in Germany in World War I, though, he had been confined to a barracks reserved for Jews—and not by Germans but by his fellow British officers, masters of "the casual anti-Semitism of Edwardian England." Still, he remained a loyal servant of the empire, gathering valuable intelligence that would have earned him a firing squad as a spy. Convinced that the educational orthodoxy was misguided, Pyke also attempted to start a network of schools to be funded by his wizardry in the stock market. Convinced that it was not enough to defeat the Nazis but to "make fools of them in beating them," he gained the confidence of Winston Churchill and cooked up some elaborately improbable technologies, including "an unsinkable aircraft carrier made out of a cheap new material that could be produced quickly." Along the way, Pyke fell into the communist orbit. "I am primarily an anti-fascist," he insisted, but he would have been a candidate for execution by his own country had he not beaten his pursuers to the punch. Hemming examines the facts, augmented by "the release of previously classified documents by MI5," surrounding the Pyke affair, suggesting that while his subject, a tinkerer and discoverer, journalist, and genius indeed, had given material aid to the Soviets, he may not have been so deeply involved as was supposed. Pyke has been dead for nearly 70 years, so modest rehabilitation is of less interest than the fascinating story surrounding his deeds—for, as Time noted, killing himself "was the only unoriginal thing he had ever done." Fans of Graham Greene and Alan Furst will revel in this well-told true-life story.

Kirkus Reviews