9780413776846 - The Shooting Star: the Colourful Life and Times of Denis Rake, Mc by Elliott, Geoffrey (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very good. First Printing [Stated]. xi, [1], 251, [1] pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. Map. Timeline. Sources. Bibliography. Index. Signed by the author on the title page. Geoffrey Elliott is an independent writer and historian. A retired investment banker, he is an Honorary Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. Denis 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 World War I. 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 (SOE) was a secret British World War II organization. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organizations. Its purpose was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe (and later, also in occupied Southeast Asia) against the Axis powers, and to aid local resistance movements. Few people were aware of SOE's existence. Those who were part of it or liaised with it were sometimes referred to as the "Baker Street Irregulars", after the location of its London headquarters. It was also known as "Churchill's Secret Army" or the "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare". Its various branches, and sometimes the organization as a whole, were concealed for security purposes behind names such as the "Joint Technical Board" or the "Inter-Service Research Bureau", or fictitious branches of the Air Ministry, Admiralty or War Office. SOE operated in all territories occupied or attacked by the Axis forces, except where demarcation lines were agreed upon with Britain's principal Allies (the United States and the Soviet Union). It also made use of neutral territory on occasion or made plans and preparations in case neutral countries were attacked by the Axis. The organization directly employed or controlled more than 13,000 people, about 3,200 of whom were women. After the war, the organization was officially dissolved on 15 January 1946.