Chapman Pincher

Henry Chapman Pincher
Born (1914-03-29)29 March 1914
Ambala, Punjab, India
Died 5 August 2014(2014-08-05) (aged 100)
Kintbury, England, United Kingdom
Occupation Journalist, historian, and novelist
Nationality British
Alma mater King's College London
Subject Espionage
Children 2

Henry Chapman Pincher (29 March 1914 – 5 August 2014) was an English journalist, historian, and novelist whose writing mainly focused on espionage and related matters, after some early books on scientific subjects.[1][2]

Early life

Pincher was born in Ambala, Punjab, to English parents. His father, Richard Chapman Pincher, was a major in the British army, and his mother Helen (née Foster), was an actress. They had married in 1913 in Pontefract.[3] His father's family was from north Yorkshire and his father was serving in the Northumberland Fusiliers in India when Chapman was born.[1]

The family returned home to Pontefract when Pincher was aged 3 and he attended 13 different schools before the family settled in Darlington, where his father would later own a sweet shop and a pub on the River Tees.[1] Aged 10 he won a scholarship to Darlington Grammar School and then studied at King's College London.[4] His first teaching job as a physics master was at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, between 1938 and 1940, before he joined the army, where he became a technical officer in the Rocket Division, Ministry of Supply, 1943-45. He joined the Daily Express in 1946 as a science and defence correspondent.

Later life and career

Pincher is best known as the author of the book Their Trade is Treachery (1981), in which he publicised for the first time the suspicions that MI5's former Director General Roger Hollis had been a spy for the Soviet Union, and describes MI5's and MI6's internal inquiries into the matter. He was at one point close to Peter Wright, who he knew suspected Harold Wilson of having been a Soviet agent, and according to the biography of Wilson written by Ben Pimlott, Pincher was trying to get information from Wright so that he could accuse Wilson in public.

Wright, a retired MI5 Soviet counterespionage officer, was Pincher's main source for Their Trade is Treachery, along with British MP Jonathan Aitken and Wright's former colleague Arthur S. Martin. Aitken, using information from retired CIA counterespionage chief James Jesus Angleton, wrote a highly confidential letter in early 1980 to British PM Margaret Thatcher, outlining Angleton's suspicions of Hollis acting as a double agent.

Pincher became enmeshed in 1986 in the Spycatcher affair, when Wright tried to publish his own book in Australia, in apparent violation of his oath-taking of the Official Secrets Act when he joined MI5. The matter led to prolonged legal wrangling, with the British government mounting a heavy defence, which was ultimately unsuccessful through three levels of the Australian court system. In the meantime Spycatcher was published in the USA in mid-1987, where it became a best-seller. Pincher was investigated and cleared of any wrongdoing, through a police investigation.[5]

Pincher was convinced that, alongside Wilson, many other members of the Labour Party were Soviet agents, among them MP Tom Driberg, who was Chairman of the Labour Party. Pincher claimed that Driberg was an active double agent for MI5 and the KGB despite his well-founded reputation for total indiscretion.[6] Treachery: Betrayals, Blunders, and Cover-ups: Six Decades of Espionage Against America and Great Britain, first published in 2009, brings the known Soviet espionage cases against the UK and USA up to date.

Death

Pincher turned 100 in March 2014.[7] He died at his home in Kintbury on 5 August 2014.[8][9]

Publications

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 3 Jack, Ian (1 July 2011). "Chapman Pincher was Fleet Street's spycatcher. His secret? A good lunch". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 July 2011.
  2. ↑ "I intend to die in the harness: Chapman Pincher is still on the hunt for spooks", The Independent; retrieved 10 March 2014.
  3. ↑ "findmypast.co.uk". Search.findmypast.co.uk. Retrieved 8 August 2014.
  4. ↑ Philby, Charlotte (16 February 2013). "'I intend to die in the harness': Chapman Pincher is still on the hunt for spooks". The Independent. Retrieved 2014-08-08.
  5. ↑ Chapman Pincher A Web of Deception: The Spycatcher Affair, London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1987; ISBN 0-283-99654-4
  6. ↑ "UK Politics: Driberg always under suspicion", BBC News, 13 September 1999.
  7. ↑ "Spycatcher Chapman Pincher turns 100". News. King's College London. 31 March 2014. Retrieved 6 April 2014.
  8. ↑ Obituary, nytimes.com, 10 August 2014; accessed 3 April 2016.
  9. ↑ "Obituary: Chapman Pincher". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 6 August 2014.
  10. ↑ Bibliographic detail taken from the publication of Traitors, London: Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1987. A reprint of the first edition in 1987.

External links

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