Merlin Minshall

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Merlin Theodore Minshall (21 December 1906 – 3 September 1987) was a British naval officer and adventurer. He is often claimed to have been one of the

Son of Colonel Thomas Herbert Minshall,

The subsequent encounter with the German agent, Lisa Kaltenbrunner came while sailing down the River Danube. She hitched a lift on his yacht – but it was no coincidence. She had been sent to discover whether he was charting the river and investigating oil storage depots for British intelligence. Having seduced him, she attempted to poison him, but Minshall survived, and the knowledge he had gained did indeed prove useful to the British in a subsequent operation during the war.

Minshall was also well known as an amateur

Subsequently, he ran a section at HMS Flowerdown, using direction finding and transmitter analysis ("Z machines") to identify the positions of individual ships. As such, during May 1941 he played a part in the hunt for the Bismarck. Posted to Fiji, he managed to get his posting changed to New Zealand, where he worked on various intelligence projects, including establishing a Z machine intercept station at Rapuara near Blenheim. Recalled to the UK, he was landed in occupied Yugoslavia as officer in charge of the Allied Naval Mission to Tito in Yugoslavia.

Minshall was married four times, the first to Elizabeth Dorothy Magdalene Loveday, from whom he was divorced in 1935. His second wife was Isolde Llewellyn, his third Janine Paulette Sergent of Lyons and fourth Christina Marjorie Zambra, great niece of the Scottish artist Harrington Mann, with whom he had four sons Peter, Matthew, Luke and Timothy.

Autobiography

Minshall wrote about his life in a book entitled Guilt-Edged, published in 1975. Its content is summed up by Len Deighton in the foreword:^[4]

"His mother was an spy in

agent and met Field Marshal Göring face to face. He was the first man to cross the Sahara on a motorcycle and while travelling through the Congo, he accidentally discovered a secret German army. But Romania

set the scene for the height of espionage activity – when he single handedly pirated a ship from under Nazi eyes and blew up a vital link in German tanker communications. The man is Merlin Minshall and this is his unique story."

• Inspirations for James Bond

References