Books by Geoffrey Elliott

'A fascinating account of an extraordinary father by his son.' Lord Rees-Mogg Who was Major Kavan Elliott? Womaniser, rogue, wartime saboteur, peacetime spy - even all of these?Behind the cover of a seemingly respectable business career, Elliott was entangled in a complex web of deception, glamorous women, Communist double agents and interrogation at the hands of the Gestapo and Hungarian secret police. Was the man who dropped blind into Serbia in 1942 on a mission for SOE a courageous daredevil or a philandering scoundrel? This is the extraordinary true story of the quest undertaken by Kavan Elliott's son to discover the truth about his father. From the torture chambers of Budapest to the classified archives of the British Secret Intelligence Service, I Spy reveals an astonishing legacy of espionage, betrayal, romance and double-dealing. This Faber Finds edition includes a new afterword by Geoffrey Elliot, drawing on hitherto secret documents.

'Here is a vivacious account of how in the 1950s, under Eden and Lloyd at the Foreign Office, some 5,000 young men doing national service were quietly siphoned off from their units, secluded in Cornwall and Fifeshire, or, more boldly, next door to the Guards depot at Coulsdon in Surrey, and put through crash courses in Russian till they could speak it fluently ...' M. R. D. Foot, SpectatorLambasted by the Soviets as a 'spy school', the Joint Services School for Linguists (JSSL) was a major Cold War initiative, which pushed 5000 young National Servicemen through intensive training as Russian translators and interpreters, primarily to meet the needs of Britain's signals intelligence operations. Its pupils included a remarkable cross-section of talented young men who went on to a diversity of glittering careers: professors of Russian, Chinese, ancient philosophy, economics; the historian Sir Martin Gilbert; authors such as Alan Bennett, Dennis Potter and Michael Frayn; screenwriter Jack Rosenthal; stage director Sir Peter Hall; and churchmen ranging from a bishop to a displaced Carmelite friar. Geoffrey Elliot and Harold Shukman, both of whom emerged from JSSL as interpreters, have drawn on many personal recollections and interviews with fellow students, as well as once highly classified documents in the Public Record Office, in order to reveal this fascinating story for the first time.'A highly entertaining read ... No one interested in late 20th century theatre or literature can afford to ignore this book.' Spectator'Elliott and Shukman write with style and wit ... They record something more than a byway in the history of the cold war, a true contribution to British history.' Michael Bourdeaux, Times Higher Education Supplement'An engaging, quirky account of this strange offshoot of the Cold War ... a kind of Virgin Soldiers for clever clogs.' Michael Leapman, Independent