1. Henry Chapman Pincher was an English journalist, historian and novelist whose writing mainly focused on espionage and related matters, after some early books on scientific subjects.
18 Facts About Chapman Pincher
1. 2.
Chapman Pincher's father, Richard Chapman Pincher was a major in the British army serving in the Northumberland Fusiliers.
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The family returned to Pontefract when Pincher was aged three.
4.
Chapman Pincher attended several different schools before the family settled in Darlington, where his father would later own a sweet shop and a pub on the River Tees.
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Chapman Pincher's first teaching job as a physics master was at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys where he took pride in writing agricultural journals.
6.
When World War II began, Chapman Pincher joined the Royal Armoured Corps, served in tanks and became a Staff Officer.
7.
Chapman Pincher took a particular interest in the details of weaponry and in intelligence and how it related to military purposes.
8.
Chapman Pincher was allowed by the military to give appropriate details about RDX and was later allowed to supply information on other subjects.
9.
Chapman Pincher believed it was important to keep the media informed on military decisions, and began to specialise in finding angles that nobody else covered.
10.
Chapman Pincher always went "above and beyond" for his investigative reporting style, including checking people's personal phone calls and relentlessly importuning important people, such as Prime Minister Harold Wilson, for answers to questions that Chapman Pincher thought were being concealed from the public.
11.
Chapman Pincher regularly provided exclusives that other journalists had missed, which led to his employers calling him "the lone wolf of Fleet Street".
12.
Chapman Pincher made both friends and enemies in high places.
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Chapman Pincher won awards as Journalist of the Year in 1964, and Reporter of the Decade in 1966.
14.
Chapman Pincher is best known as the author of the book Their Trade is Treachery, in which he publicized for the first time the suspicions that MI5's former Director General Roger Hollis had been a spy for the Soviet Union, and described MI5's and MI6's internal inquiries into the matter.
15.
Chapman Pincher became ensnared in 1986 in the Spycatcher affair, when Wright tried to publish his own book in Australia, in apparent violation of his oath-taking of the Official Secrets Act when he joined MI5.
16.
Chapman Pincher was investigated and cleared of any wrongdoing, through a police investigation.
17.
Chapman Pincher died on 5 August 2014 at Kintbury in West Berkshire, aged 100 years old, having suffered a stroke seven weeks earlier.
18.
Chapman Pincher died with his family by his side, talking about his time in espionage and the power it gave him in his career.