FAMOUS FACES WHO SPIED ON THE SIDE

ROALD DAHL

Long before he wrote classics such as Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, author Roald Dahl was a British spy.

He’d been an RAF fighter pilot in the Second World War but after being injured in 1940 he was transferred to the British Embassy in Washington DC.

He was then tasked by British Intelligence with charming Washington’s most powerful women and using them to rally support for Britain at a time when many Americans didn’t want their country to enter the war. He also passed valuable stolen documents to the British government.

GRETA GARBO

Swedish actress Garbo operated as a go-between for British Intelligence, the Swedish royal family and the elite of her home country, using her celebrity status to identify Nazi agents and report on their actions.

URI GELLER

The Israeli illusionist shot to fame in the 1970s by apparently bending spoons with his psychic powers. But a 2013 British documentary The Secret Life Of Uri Geller – Psychic Spy? contended that Geller was recruited by the CIA to help in a “psychic arms race” with Russia during the Cold War.

Only last week Geller revealed how a battery of tests by the CIA in the 1970s proved his psychic abilities.

CARY GRANT

Cary Grant played the part of an American spy in Hitchcock’s film Notorious but he was also employed by US Intelligence to flush out Nazi sympathisers in Hollywood during the Second World War.

Among those he apparently investigated were Errol Flynn and the Danish former husband of heiress Barbara Hutton (whom Grant later briefly married in 1942).

NOEL COWARD

Playwright Noel Coward was Cary Grant’s contact at MI6. He was trained as a spymaster and then threw parties for pro-Nazi sympathizers.

In the 1970s it emerged that Coward’s worldwide tours of the upper-class party scene actually shaped the flow of intelligence during the Second World War. He quipped: “Celebrity was a wonderful cover, my disguise was my own reputation as a bit of an idiot... a merry playboy.”

IAN FLEMING

Author Ian Fleming trained alongside Coward at MI6’s secret HQ at Bletchley Park before being posted to Naval Military Intelligence. No wonder he later created the world’s most famous fictitious spy, James Bond.