Churchill's Iceman

Henry Hemming is the author of five works of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times bestseller M, the Dolman Travel Award-shortlisted Misadventure in the Middle East and Churchill’s Iceman, a New York Times bestseller. He has written for the Economist, The Sunday Times, FT Magazine and the Washington Post, among many others. He lives in London with his two children.

"The papers that MI5 released in 2009 have led to the discovery of a wonderful new subject for modern biography. Geoffrey Pyke was a tragic and lonely genius who attempted to plant new ideas into the unresponsive soil of Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. His final wish "to be forgotten as if I had never lived" has now been dramatically eclipsed by this amazing story of mystery and adventure. It is as if he had been invented by G. K. Chesterton and given posthumous fame by John le Carre - which underlines the extraordinary accomplishment of his actual biographer Henry Hemming." -- Michael Holroyd "His was not a lucky life but, in his biographer, he has gained a little bit of posthumous luck. This admirable and thoroughly enjoyable book should rescue a weirdly original and innovative talent from oblivion" The Sunday Times "A biography that reads wonderfully like an adventure story and looks set to restore to Pyke the fame he deserves... Hemming's great achievement is to turn the story of a nerdish chameleon into a page-turner and to make someone hitherto unknown seem crucial to his century" Guardian