Chapman Pincher: Dangerous To Know Book

Harry Chapman Pincher is a legend amongst journalists. His name, a byword for investigative journalism, sounded a note of real terror for those trying to safeguard the secrets of state. Chapman Pincher came to journalism late, after early careers as a teacher, a scientist and a soldier, but after joining Lord Beaverbrook's then all-powerful Daily Express in the summer of 1945, he swiftly became the master of the journalistic scoop. His first splash, a leaked top secret account of the development of the atomic bomb, sparked a furious trans-Atlantic row. It was only the start of a career in which the name Chapman Pincher became synonymous with high-level leaks from the most secret parts of government. At a time when national newspapers operated out of Fleet Street and journalists hunted in packs, Chapman Pincher preferred to hunt alone, cultivating the high and mighty at shooting parties and other social gatherings where they were relaxed enough to share what seemed at the time to be every secret they knew. He still revels in the bitter claim of historian E P Thompson, that he was a kind of official urinal into which senior members of the government and the intelligence services stood patiently leaking in the public interest. When he finally retired from journalism, the leaks kept coming, leading to a series of best-selling books on the infiltration of Britain's intelligence services by Moscow which culminated in the allegation in Their Trade is Treachery that the head of MI5, was a Soviet spy. Colourful, indiscreet and compelling, this life of a true journalistic colossus also reveals the secret history of the century he bestrode.Read More