"Fitzroy Maclean Fought the Nazis, Blew Up Forts and ..." Topic

…Met a King.

"Fitzroy Maclean, a Scottish aristocrat and adventurer, was born into a military family in Cairo in 1911, and was educated at Eton and then Cambridge – playgrounds of the British elite. He lived a long and remarkable life. "To some people, my life might seem one long adventure holiday, blowing up forts in the desert, clandestinely parachuting into guerrilla wars, penetrating forbidden cities deep behind closed frontiers," he said a year before his death in 1996.

A diplomat and accomplished linguist prior to the outbreak of World War II, and a successful writer, politician and documentary filmmaker afterward, Maclean would've been a noteworthy figure without his almost unbelievable exploits in the war. His contribution to the war effort would lead him to rise from the rank of private in 1941 to brigadier in 1945, be appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and receive the Order of Khutuzov from the Soviet Union, the Croix de Guerre from France and the Order of the Partisan Star from Yugoslavia…."
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Amicalement
Armand

You should read his memoirs Tango. Eastern Approaches, fascinating and at times hilarious. It covers both his time with the SAS in the desert, the two years he spent with Tito's partisans, as well as his time as a diplomat in the Soviet Union before the war. Well worth picking up a copy.

I agree, I picked up Eastern Approaches purely by chance whilst browsing a 2nd hand book shop in Lyme Regis on a rainy day , a small brown hardback with an uninspiring title and which I would normally ignore 99 times out of 100.
An excellent read.

Thanks for your guidance my friends!

Amicalement
Armand