A biography of Airey Neave, Colditz escapee, MI6 officer, mastermind of Margaret Thatcher's leadership campaign and on the verge of being her first Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he was brutally murdered in the palace of Westminster by the INLA. Neave's sensational escape and his equally sensational death are the extent of most people's knowledge and appreciation of one of Britain's most mysterious public figures. The two events, separated by 35 years, are crucially linked: Neave joined a division of MI6 ...
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A biography of Airey Neave, Colditz escapee, MI6 officer, mastermind of Margaret Thatcher's leadership campaign and on the verge of being her first Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he was brutally murdered in the palace of Westminster by the INLA. Neave's sensational escape and his equally sensational death are the extent of most people's knowledge and appreciation of one of Britain's most mysterious public figures. The two events, separated by 35 years, are crucially linked: Neave joined a division of MI6 following his wartime bravery to advise other would-be escapees. He was also active in establishing the Gladio network with SOE. Soon after the war, and after working as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, he successfully entered Parliament as Conservative MP for Abingdon, where he sat until his death. Overlooked by Macmillan and Heath for high office, ostensibly on health grounds, Neave pursued a public life of a very unusual kind: he became conspicuously inconspicuous, operating almost entirely outside the public gaze. During the early 1970s Neave was in contact with anti-Wilson plotters and by 1974 he was calling for Edward Heath's resignation too, seeing weakness in the Tory leader's capitulation to the miners. Thatcher was his crusading angel and he ran a brilliant leadership campaign, fooling more experienced candidates into complacency and securing Thatcher's triumph. She offered him any job in her Cabinet in return. Inexplicably to most he chose Northern Ireland and had prepared the most confrontational and explicitly belligerent strategy ever seen there. A matter of weeks before Thatcher's General Election victory began 18 years of Conservative government, Neave's extraordinary life of intrigue and scheming was ended by a plot he had not foreseen.
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Very good in very good jacket. [8], 392 pages. Illustrations. References. Index. Some page discoloration. Paul Routledge (born 11 December 1943) is an English journalist. Routledge currently writes for the Daily Mirror, where he is a political correspondent, and is considered 'Old Labor' in his political outlook. After an education at Normanton Grammar School and Nottingham University, where he read English, Routledge began his career in journalism on graduation. By 1969 he was working for The Times on the Labor relations desk, later becoming Labor editor. He joined The Observer (in 1986) shortly after the Wapping dispute. When The Guardian took over that newspaper, he left for the Independent on Sunday. He has written biographies of Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, Arthur Scargill and Airey Neave. Airey Middleton Sheffield Neave, DSO, OBE, MC, TD, MP (23 January 1916-30 March 1979) was a British army officer, barrister and politician. During World War II, Neave was the first British officer successfully to escape from the German prisoner-of-war camp Oflag IV-C at Colditz Castle. He later became Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Abingdon. Neave was assassinated in 1979 in a car-bomb attack at the House of Commons. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) claimed responsibility. Neave was sent to France in February 1940 as part of a searchlight regiment, he was wounded and captured by the Germans at Calais on 23 May 1940. He was imprisoned at Oflag IX-A/H near Spangenberg and in February 1941 moved to Stalag XXa near Thorn in German-occupied western Poland. Meanwhile, Neave's commission was transferred to the Royal Artillery on 1 August 1940. In April 1941 he escaped from Thorn with Norman Forbes. They were captured while trying to enter Soviet-controlled Poland and were briefly in the hands of the Gestapo. In May, they were both sent to Oflag IV-C (often referred to as Colditz Castle because of its location). Neave escaped and returned to England in April 1942. Neave was the first British officer to escape from Colditz Castle. On 12 May 1942, shortly after his return to England, he was decorated with the Military Cross. He was subsequently promoted to war substantive captain and to the permanent rank of captain on 11 April 1945. A temporary major at the war's end, he was appointed an MBE (Military Division) on 30 August 1945, and awarded the DSO on 18 October. He was later recruited as an intelligence agent for MI9. While at MI9, he was the immediate superior of Michael Bentine. He also served with the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials, investigating Krupp. As a well-known war hero-as well as a qualified lawyer who spoke fluent German-he was honored with the role of reading the indictments to the Nazi leaders on trial. He wrote several books about his war experiences including an account of the Trials. A temporary lieutenant-colonel by 1947, he was appointed an OBE (Military Division) in that year's Birthday Honours. He was awarded the Bronze Star by the US government on 23 July 1948, and was promoted to lieutenant-colonel on 1 April 1950, At the same time, his promotion to acting major was gazetted, with retroactive effect from 16 April 1948. He entered the reserves on 21 September 1951. Neave stood for the Conservative Party at the 1950 election in Thurrock and at Ealing North in 1951. He was elected for Abingdon in a by-election in June 1953. Neave was author of the new and radical Conservative policy of abandoning devolution in Northern Ireland if there was no early progress in that regard and concentrating on local government reform instead. This integrationist policy was hastily abandoned by Humphrey Atkins, who became Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the role Neave had shadowed. Airey Neave was killed on 30 March 1979, when a magnetic car bomb fitted with a ball bearing tilt switch exploded under his new Vauxhall Cavalier at 14: 58 as he drove out of the Palace of Westminster car park....
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