Research Catalog

Title

Double Agent Celery : MI5's crooked hero / Carolinda Witt ; foreword by Nigel West.

Author

Witt, Carolinda.

Publication

Barnsley, South Yorkshire : Pen & Sword Military, 2017.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xx, 271, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, genealogical table, portraits; 25 cm

Subject

• Dicketts, Walter
• Great Britain. MI5 > Officials and employees > Biography
• World War, 1939-1945 > Great Britain
• Intelligence officers > Great Britain > Biography
• Secret service > Great Britain

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references: (page [258]-259) and index.

Contents

• "With Britain braced for a German invasion in 1940, MI5 recruited an ex-RNAS officer, come confidence trickster, called Walter Dicketts as a double agent. Codenamed CELERY, Dicketts was sent with the seemingly impossible mission of persuading the Germans he was a traitor in order to extract their secrets. Once there, the Nazis spirited him off to Germany. Dicketts had to outwit his interrogators in Hamburg and Berlin before returning to Britain as, in the Nazis' eyes, a German spy. Despite it being later discovered that he had been betrayed as an MI5 plant before he even left for Germany, CELERY somehow made it safely back to London. After that he presuaded an Abwehr officer to defect, before spending six months undercover in Brazil. A mixture of hero and crook, Dicketts was worldly and intelligent, charming and charismatic. Sometimes rich and sometimes poor, his private life was a web of complexity and deception. Using family and official records, police records, newspaper articles and memories, the author unravels yet true story of Double Agent Celery." -- Book jacket.
• Dramatis personae -- Walter Dicketts family tree -- Author's note -- Foreword / Nigel West -- Prologue.
• 1. A fateful meeting -- 2. From batteries to spying -- 3. About turn -- 4. A new kind of spy -- 5. Loyal rogue -- 6. Parachutes and dinghies -- 7. Penetrate the Abwehr -- 8. Escape from Germany -- 9. Who to believe? -- 10. Aftermath -- 11. South America beckons -- 12. A new life -- 13. Lost and found.
• Postscript / Katharine Ritter -- Appendix one: Abwehr accounts -- Appendix two: John Masterman's hypothesis regarding Snow and Celery's meeting with Ritter in Lisbon in February 1941.

Call Number

JFE 18-1736

ISBN

• 1526716143
• 9781526716149

OCLC

990845411

Author

Witt, Carolinda.

Title

Double Agent Celery : MI5's crooked hero / Carolinda Witt ; foreword by Nigel West.

Imprint

Barnsley, South Yorkshire : Pen & Sword Military, 2017.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references: (page [258]-259) and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 18-1736