Alexander Wallace Fielding, known as Xan Fielding, was a British author, translator, journalist and traveller, who served as a Special Operations Executive agent in Crete, France and East Asia during World War II.
15 Facts About Xan Fielding
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Xan Fielding was educated at Charterhouse School and then studied briefly at the Universities of Bonn, Munich and Freiburg in Germany.
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The actor Gerald Xan Fielding was his uncle and took care of him after the death of his grandparents.
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Xan Fielding teamed up with Patrick Leigh Fermor, and built an intelligence gathering network which provided detailed information on the movement of Axis troops, shipping, and air transport.
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Xan Fielding arranged for the transportation to Egypt of hundreds of Allied soldiers left behind after the evacuation, and now being hidden by the Cretans.
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Xan Fielding finally returned to Crete with Arthur Reade in November 1942.
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In early 1944 Xan Fielding volunteered to join the French section of SOE, and was parachuted into the south of France in mid-1944, where he was met by two other SOE agents: Francis Cammaerts and Christine Granville of the "Jockey" network.
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Xan Fielding served in the Far East for a few months until the end of the war, and visited Tibet.
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Xan Fielding then spent six months in Germany serving with the Special Intelligence Service, before serving as a United Nations observer in the Balkans in 1946.
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Xan Fielding wrote a number of books; including The Stronghold, an account of SOE's Cretan operations, and a memoir of his own wartime experiences Hide and Seek.
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Xan Fielding provided the English translations for many of the works of the French novelist Pierre Boulle, including his best-known books Le Pont de la riviere Kwai and La Planete des singes.
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Xan Fielding translated several books by Jean Larteguy, as well as works by Gabriel Chevallier, Pierre Schoendoerffer and Jean Hougron.
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Xan Fielding collaborated with Patrick Leigh Fermor in a translation from Greek of George Psychoundakis' book The Cretan Runner.
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Xan Fielding remarried, to Agnes, daughter of Admiral John H Magruder of the US Navy and the widow of the artist Arshile Gorky.
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Xan Fielding died in Paris on 19 August 1991, aged 72.