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The Eagle in the Mirror

In Search of War Hero, Master Spy and Alleged Traitor Charles Howard 'Dick' Ellis

Jesse Fink
Australian-born Dick Ellis was MI6’s longest-serving officer and helped to establish the organization that became the CIA, but after his death in 1975 he was denounced as a traitor. Drawing on archival research and interviews with those who knew him, this biography unravels the secret life of the man thought to be the model for James Bond, and investigates the allegations that he spied for both the Nazis and the Soviets.
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Product information:
  • Publisher: Black & White
  • Year: 2024
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352pp
  • Illustrated: Yes
  • Dimensions: 196x128mm
  • ISBN: 9781785305252
  • Condition: New
  • Weight: 0.3kg
Product code:
545341
Product information
Full publisher description
Part biography, part forensic jigsaw puzzle, part cold-case detective investigation, The Eagle in the Mirror is the story of Charles Howard 'Dick' Ellis. The longest-serving spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Ellis helped set up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), now known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). In the 1940s he was considered one of the top three secret agents in MI6 and controlled its activities, as one journalist put it, 'for half the world'.

But in the 1980s crusading espionage journalist Chapman Pincher (in the hugely successful books Their Trade is Treachery and Too Secret Too Long) and retired MI5 intelligence officer Peter Wright (in the worldwide bestseller Spycatcher) posthumously accused Ellis of having operated as a 'triple agent' for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1965, while under interrogation in London, Ellis had allegedly made a confession that he had supplied information to the Nazis before World War II. However, Pincher's and Wright's accusations against Ellis have never been comprehensively proven. No confession has materialised.

Was Ellis guilty or was an innocent man framed? By confessing did he take the fall for someone else? Or had the intelligence agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia been fatally compromised by a 'super mole'? Internationally bestselling author JESSE FINK (Pure Narco, Bon: The Last Highway, The Youngs) attempts to find out the truth once and for all.

The Eagle in the Mirror is not just a long-overdue biography of the unheralded Dick Ellis; it's a gripping real-life international whodunit.
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