Ted Allbeury

Ted Allbeury was is one of England’s best espionage thriller writers of the twentieth century. Born in Stockport, Cheshire, he served in British intelligence as a Special Operations Executive and was the only secret agent to parachute into Germany during World War II, and live behind enemy lines until the allies landed. Allbeury had a pretty eventful; life having lost his father days before the 1918-Armistice of World War I. His mother had moved the family to Birmingham where he went to King Edward’s Grammar school, and became a draftsman and later designer in an iron foundry. It was during this time that he also taught himself German and French. When World War II broke out he tried to join the RAF but was rejected, prosecuted, and fined for trying to leave a reserved occupation. But he was not deterred and soon applied for a linguist job with the army that he spotted in a newspaper advertisement.