17 Facts About Paul Dukes

Sir Paul Henry Dukes was a British MI6 officer and author.

Paul Henry Dukes was born the third of five children on 10 February 1889 in Bridgwater, Somerset, England.

Paul Dukes was the son of the Congregationalist clergyman, Rev Edwin Joshua Dukes, of Kingsland, London, and his wife, the former Edith Mary Pope, of Sandford, Devon.

Paul Dukes died from a disease of the thyroid gland, and in 1907, Edwin remarried to a 40-year-old widow named Harriet Rouse.

Paul Dukes had an elder sister, Irene Catherine Dukes, who led a life plagued by illness, and yet another, younger brother, Marcus Braden Dukes, who died in Kuala Lumpur while working as a government official.

Paul Dukes's sister-in-law was the renowned ballet dancer Marie Rambert.

Paul Dukes was the great-uncle of poet Aidan Andrew Dun, who is the grandson of his brother Ashley.

Paul Dukes later moved to St Petersburg, having been recruited personally by Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first "C" of MI6, to act as a secret agent in Imperial Russia, relying on his fluency in the Russian language.

Paul Dukes successfully infiltrated the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Comintern, and even the political police, or CHEKA.

Paul Dukes learned of the inner workings of the Politburo, and passed the information to British intelligence.

Paul Dukes briefly returned to active service in 1939, helping to locate a prominent Czech businessman who had disappeared after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.

Paul Dukes referred to the businessman as Alfred Obry in his later book about the search, entitled An Epic of the Gestapo.

Paul Dukes combed all the Czech papers and in one found this paragraph: 'A thirteen-year-old boy found on the railway line to Tuschkau the completely unrecognizable corpse of a man.

Paul Dukes built up a strong case against the Gestapo of murdering Obry and not only demanded exhumation of the body but succeeded in persuading the Germans to do this.

Paul Dukes was a leading figure in introducing yoga to the Western World.

In 1922, Paul Dukes was first married to Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd, former wife of Ogden Livingston Mills, the US Secretary of the Treasury.

Paul Dukes died on 27 August 1967 in Cape Town, South Africa, aged 78.