In 1976 the bestselling biography A Man Called Intrepid made the Canadian spy Sir. William Stephenson something close to a household name. The book claimed that the previously obscure Stephenson had secretly been the head of one of WWII’s most important espionage agencies. Some even gave him credit for inspiring Ian Fleming’s beloved fictional spy, James Bond. But, despite it’s success, the book soon met with a wave of criticism from historians. The most vocal critics decried Stephenson as an “intrepid fraud” who “fooled the world into believing he was a master spy.” Was Stephenson truly an important part of British Intelligence, or was he just a Winnipeg con-man who duped his gullible biographers. Tune-in and find out how secret Canadian commando camps, stolen can openers, and the Butcher of Prague all play a role in the story.

Works Cited

Hitz, Frederick Porter. The Great Game : The Myths and Reality of Espionage. Vintage Books, a division of Random House, 2005.

Hyde, H. Montgomery (Harford Montgomery). The Quiet Canadian : The Secret Service Story of Sir William Stephenson. Hamish Hamilton, 1962.

Macdonald, Bill (William James). The True Intrepid : Sir William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents. 1st ed., Timberholme Books, 2001.

Stafford, David. “‘Intrepid’: Myth and Reality.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 22, no. 2, 1987, pp. 303–17. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/260934.

Stevenson, William. A Man Called Intrepid : The Secret War. Lyons Press, 2000.

Trevor-Roper, Hugh. “Superagent: Review of A Man Called Intrepid” The New York Review of Books, 13 May 1976, www.nybooks.com/articles/1976/05/13/superagent/.