Peter Lunn
Peter Lunn | |
---|---|
Full name | Peter Northcote Lunn |
Born | Coventry, England | 15 November 1914
Died | 30 November 2011[1] | (aged 97)
Peter Northcote Lunn (15 November 1914 – 30 November 2011) was a
Biography
The son of Arnold Lunn and Mabel Stafford Northcote (1889-1959), granddaughter of the 1st Earl of Iddesleigh. He was born in Coventry and educated at Eton.
Shortly before his second birthday in 1916, Lunn's father introduced him to skiing at Mürren, which was the Lunn family's winter home.[2] "I remember endlessly walking up the practice slope, skiing over a large bump and falling over," Lunn said at the age of 95. "My mother picked me up and said, 'Lean forward' – rather good advice."[3] During the 1930s, Lunn was one of Britain's leading skiers. He was a member of the British international ski team from 1931 to 1937, and its captain from 1934 to 1937. At the
As well as two skiing manuals and The Guinness Book of Skiing, Lunn also wrote Evil in High Places, a thriller with a skiing background.
On 24 April 1939, Lunn married the
Espionage writer Richard C. S. Trahair provides this description of Lunn: "He had a slight build and blue eyes, spoke in a soft voice with a lisp, and appeared to be a quiet gentle fellow. However benign his appearance, he was a forceful man of strong will, hardworking, a devout
In 1939 Peter Lunn entered government service, and in 1941 he joined the
As head of the SIS station in Vienna, Lunn discovered that beneath the French and British sectors, there were telephone cables that linked field units and airports of the Russian Army to Soviet headquarters. He got expert advice on tapping these lines, and a private mining consultant agreed to construct a tunnel from the basement of a police post to the main phone cable between the Soviet headquarters in the Imperial Hotel and the Russian military airfield at
In 1954 Lunn was SIS head of station in Berlin, and cooperated with his
Lunn retired from government service in 1986.[4] In 2008, at a centenary dinner, he became an honorary member of the Alpine Ski Club, which his father Arnold Lunn had founded 100 years earlier.
He was predeceased by a son and a daughter.[8]
Publications
- High-Speed Skiing (1935)
- Evil in High Places (1947)
- A Ski-ing Primer (1948)
- The Guinness Book of Skiing (1983)
References
- ^ Peter Lunn's obituary
- ^ Dale Bechtel. "Braving skiing's Inferno", swissinfo, 29 January 2004.
- ^ a b c Adam Ruck. "Peter Lunn: 'I was furious if I didn't fall'", The Independent, 16 January 2010.
- ^ a b c d e f g Richard C. S. Trahair. Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004: 176–177.
- ^ Arnold Lunn. Unkilled for So Long. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968: 64.
- ^ Peter Lunn – Family tree André Decloitre
- ^ a b Joseph C. Goulden. "Castro's spies, U. S. partner, a war", The Washington Times, 9 February 2003.
- ^ "Spy who loved to ski went underground in Cold War quest". 8 December 2011.
External links
- Alpine skiing 1936 (in Polish)
- Winter Olympics: Lord of the Alps