The Shooting Star
The Colourful Life and Times of Denis Rake, MC, a Clandestine Hero of World War II
Geoffrey Elliott
Buy The Shooting Star online at The Methuen Bookshop by following the link to the right. "Elliott has penetrated deeper than most authors do into the muddles that dogged much of SOE's work in the field, and shows a wide and cultivated understanding of English and French 20th-century society, quite apart from the intricacies of resistance, which he has also mastered. His book is therefore required reading both for resistance and social historians." M R D Foot, The Spectator, July 2009 Rake, born in 1901, was the son of a Times correspondent in Brussels and a Belgian soprano. He spent his youth in a circus - and in Occupied Belgium in the First World War. Rake spent some years as the gay lover of various exotic European mentors. He was working at Drury Lane with Ivor Novello when war broke out. He became an SOE wireless operator, and served in France with immense courage on two missions, surviving capture by the Germans and escape across the Pyrenees. Slight of stature and defiantly gay even when living amid a band of maquis (resistance fighters) in the Auvergne, Rake was one of the most raffish and endearing of SOE's extraordinary gallery of stars, and was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery in battle. The Special Operations Executive warmed by Churchill's sponsorship, gathered together an extraordinary range of individualists and exhibitionists, heroes and lunatics. Denis Rake was one of the most extraordinary of these. Denis Rake was a delightfully camp figure who, in 1947, was eking a living as Douglas Fairbanks Jnr's butler. His employer was disconcerted to see a letter arrive at the house, addressed to 'Major Denis Rake, MC'. 'Oh dear, I'd hoped you wouldn't know about all that nonsense', said the butler apologetically. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Geoffrey Elliott is the author of I Spy, From Siberia with Love, Overend and Gurney and co-author of Secret Classrooms: An Untold Story of the Cold War. He is an Honorary Fellow of St Anthony's College, Oxford. Having trained as a Russian interpreter at the Joint Services School for Linguists, he has translated several books from and into Russian. He lives in Bermuda. Buy The Shooting Star online at The Methuen Bookshop by following the link above.RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS INFORMATION: Methuen holds additional rights in The Shooting Star. If you seek assistance with a rights or permissions request please contact us on info@methuen.co.uk or methuenpubltd@btinternet.com
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