'Intrepid': Myth and Reality

Abstract

'This book ... is, from start to finish, utterly worthless,' wrote Lord Dacre in his now famous New York Review of Books expose of William Stevenson's 1976 bestselling life of Sir William Stephenson, A Man Called Intrepid. Characterizing it as an 'egregious publication', concocted after 'listening mindlessly to octogenarian reminiscences', Lord Dacre or, as he then was, Professor Hugh Trevor Roper denounced the book for its 'grotesque claims' and suggested that responsibility must in part lie with the subject as well as the biographer. Recalling that towards the end of his life, the wartime head of the Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Stewart Menzies, developed delusions of grandeur and had been inclined to see the second world war as a dialogue between himself and Admiral Canaris, he suggested that Sir William Stephenson who was then, and still is, alive and living in retirement in Bermuda had fallen victim to a similar affliction. 'We should remember with affection our old clubland heroes,' he concluded, 'but publishers should flee from their approaches and friends should prevail upon them to be silent.'1 Silence, however, is about the last quality which has characterized 'Intrepid's' fate in the decade since the homophonous journalist claimed that William Stephenson at British Security Co-ordination (BSC) in New York had directed the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), MI5, Special Operations Executive (SOE), and the Security Executive in Britain's masterful and global secret war against the evils of nazi Germany and fascist Italy. But before hearing some of the critics, let us just recall the broad features of the portrait so graphically portrayed by Stevenson, the bold brush of the artist in the book which one estimate claimed sold some four million copies in its hardback and paperback versions; and which has convinced many innocent readers that this Winnipeg-born businessman was the greatest master-spy of the twentieth century.