Charles Scott Moncrieff (1889–1930) is best known as the inspired translator of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. Written with access to his personal archive, this biography reveals Scott Moncrieff as a man of contradictions: the poetic interpreter of Proust was also a much-decorated soldier who was seriously injured in France in 1916; a convert to Catholicism, he was also a homosexual; and this sociable, well-known man of letters led a parallel life as a spy in fascist Italy.