Risk, Secrets and Shadows – the Biography of Wilfred ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale

A Suspicion of Spies

An exhaustively researched, detailed and gripping account of the life and dramatic times of one of Britain's foremost secret agents - the inimitable Wilfred 'Biffy' Dunderdale. A fabulous hero to quicken any schoolboy adventurer's blood, Dunderdale remains an iconic figure in the world of British and allied secret services. Read this book to understand why.

Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer OBE has led a life filled with action and adventure. During his twenty years in the British Army he saw active service in Northern Ireland, the Falklands campaign, the Gulf War and the Balkans, as well as serving in the Far East, Cyprus and Germany. Key appointments have included Chief of Staff of an Armoured Brigade, Staff Officer at the Directorate of Special Forces and Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, among many others. Over the course of his illustrious military career, Spicer has developed extensive knowledge of intelligence, counter-terrorism, complex relations and protective security. In 2001 he founded the private security company Aegis, which has counted the UK, US and Italian governments among its clients. He is the author of An Unorthodox Soldier: Peace and War and the Sandline Affair (2000), a fast-moving account of his military life, including the events surrounding his time in Papua New Guinea when he was captured and held at gunpoint, as well as the notorious 'Sandline Affair' of 1996, and A Dangerous Enterprise (2021) that charts the history of the little-known, yet remarkable 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla, commanded directly by the Secret Intelligence Service.

The best-selling biography of the greatest spy you've never heard of. A Suspicion of Spies is the first biography of 'Biffy' Dunderdale and tells the intriguing story of an extraordinary man – suave, sophisticated, genial and rich but also a ruthless and effective spymaster. Following his career, that spanned the Russian Revolution to the Cold War and beyond, A Suspicion of Spies is awash with stories of adventure, bravery, glamour and exoticism. 
1916, Russia. A 17-year-old Wilfred ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale is working for his father, taking submarines from Vladivostok to St Petersburg for the Russian Imperial Navy. He takes a submarine out for sea trials along with a naval dockyard crew he’d never met before. Spotting a group of German ships, he gives the order to attack and sinks four of them. On returning to Kronstadt, breaking free from an anti-submarine net with just 30 minutes of oxygen left, he opens the hatch to find every gun in the port facing him and his crew. Fluent in Russian, he quickly defuses the situation. For this action he is awarded by Tsar Nicholas II the Order of St. Stanislav and the Order of St. Anne, imperial Russia’s highest knighthood for military valour and ‘bravery in battle’. 
 
Biffy, born and raised in Odessa, soon learnt to operate at all levels of Odessan society. Clearly highly intelligent, by 16 he was studying Naval Architecture and Naval Engineering in St Petersburg - broadening his education further in the waterfront bars of both Odessa and St. Petersburg. 
 
Aged 18 he was engaged by Naval Intelligence as an interpreter on account of his language skills, English, Russian, French, Polish and German. He would soon grow into a buccaneering member of the British Secret Intelligence Service in a career spanning forty years which Biffy described as ‘40 years of licensed thuggery.’ 
 
Biffy appears in over 60 books and websites and yet no one has ever written the story of his life. ‘He was rather like a ghost one knew was there but the apparition never stood still long enough for a clear view.’ A Suspicion of Spies is the first ever biography of Biffy and tells the intriguing story of an extraordinary man – suave, sophisticated, genial and rich but also a ruthless and effective spymaster. Following his career, that spanned the Russian Revolution to the Cold War and beyond, A Suspicion of Spies is awash with stories of adventure, bravery, glamour and exoticism. 
 
Biffy was a lifelong friend of Ian Fleming and many have considered him to be the blueprint for Bond. There is likely some truth in this. The tales of action and intrigue found in this comprehensive biography could be taken straight from the pages of From Russia with Love, which Biffy acted as ‘consultant’ for. 
 
This biography is the story of the complicated intrigues of the world of intelligence. It is what the British are good at and Biffy was one of the best.

Secret War at Sea

A Dangerous Enterprise

Between 1942 and 1944 a very small, very secret, very successful clandestine unit of the Royal Navy, operated between Dartmouth in Devon, and the Brittany Coast in France. It was a crossing of about 100 miles, every yard of it dangerous. The unit was called the 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla: crewed by 125 officers and men, it became the most highly decorated Royal Naval unit of the Second World War. 
The 15th MGBF was an extraordinary group of men thrown together in the most secret of adventures. Very few were regular Royal Naval officers: instead the unit was made up of mostly Royal Naval Volunteer Officers and 'duration only' sailors. Their home was a converted paddle steamer and luxury yacht, but their work could not have been more serious. 
 
Their mission was to ferry agents of SIS and SOE to pinpoint landing sites on the Brittany coast in Occupied France. Once they had landed their agents, together with stores for the Resistance, they picked up evaders, escaped POWs who had had the good fortune to be collected by escape lines run by M19, as well as returning SIS and SOE agents. 
 
It is a story that is inextricably entwined with that of the many agents they were responsible for - Pierre Hentic, Yves Le Tac, Virginia Hall, Albert Hué, Jeannie Rousseau, Suzanne Warengham, François Mitterrand and Mathilde Carré, as well as many others. Without the Flotilla, such intelligence gathering networks as Jade Fitzroy and Alliance would never have developed, and SOE's VAR Line and MI9's Shelburne Escape Line would never have been realised. 
 
Drawing on a huge amount of research on both sides of the Channel, including private archives of many of the families involved, A Dangerous Enterprise brings the story of this most clandestine of operations brilliantly to life.

Tim Spicer

The Biography of Brian Franks DSO MC, the Man Who Saved The SAS

This story is not just another history of the SAS. It is the only biography of an extraordinary man, ‘whose courage made it easier for us to be brave’. Brian Franks, tough, capable and charismatic and loved by officers and soldiers alike, is largely unknown outside the Special Operations world but has been credited by David Stirling as being one of the five founding fathers of the SAS. A dashing bon viveur, he could move freely in all sections of society, from members of the royal family to junior soldiers. He was close friends with a wide range of characters. David Niven, Ian Fleming, Evelyn Waugh, and Winston Churchill as well as his military comrades – the Stirling Brothers, Paddy Mayne, Roy Farran and Bob Laycock. Set against the backdrop of World War II and the Cold War, Franks’ life was one of bravery, intrigue and glamour.As for the title of this book, in 1918 Franks wrote a letter to his parents from his prep school. The letter, written on lined, dusty pink paper, began, ‘Dear Mummy and Daddy, I hope you are well. Please send me an axe and four balloons…’. The reason for this strange request was never explained, but if the rest of Franks’ life is anything to go by, the possibilities are endless.

Tim Spicer

Books by Tim Spicer

Series by Tim Spicer

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