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The Ingenious Mr Pyke: Inventor, Fugitive, Spy
This is the extraordinary story of Geoffrey Pyke, an inventor, war reporter, escaped prisoner, campaigner, father, educator--and all-around misunderstood genius. In his day, he was described as one of the world's great minds, to rank alongside Einstein, yet he remains virtually unknown today. Pyke was an unlikely hero of both world wars and, among many other things, is seen today as the father of the U.S. Special Forces. He changed the landscape of British pre-school education, earned a fortune on the stock market, wrote a bestseller and in 1942 convinced Winston Churchill to build an aircraft carrier out of reinforced ice. He escaped from a German WWI prison camp, devised an ingenious plan to help the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and launched a private attempt to avert the outbreak of the Second World War by sending into Nazi Germany a group of pollsters disguised as golfers.
Despite his brilliance, Pyke ultimately could not find peace, committing suicide in 1948. Yet the full scope of his story remained secret even after his death: in 2009, MI5 released a mass of material suggesting that Pyke was in fact a senior official in the Soviet Comintern. In 1951 papers relating to Pyke were found in the flat of "Cambridge Spy' Guy Burgess after his defection to Moscow. MI5 had "watchers" follow Pyke through the bombed-out streets of London, his letters were opened and listening devices picked up clues to his real identity. Convinced he was a Soviet agent codenamed Professor P, MI5 helped to bring his career to an end. It is only now, more than sixty years after his death, that Geoffrey Pyke's astonishing story can be told in full. The Mad Scientist of Whitehall is a many-faceted account of this enigmatic man’s genius, and reveals him as one of the great innovators of the last century.
Despite his brilliance, Pyke ultimately could not find peace, committing suicide in 1948. Yet the full scope of his story remained secret even after his death: in 2009, MI5 released a mass of material suggesting that Pyke was in fact a senior official in the Soviet Comintern. In 1951 papers relating to Pyke were found in the flat of "Cambridge Spy' Guy Burgess after his defection to Moscow. MI5 had "watchers" follow Pyke through the bombed-out streets of London, his letters were opened and listening devices picked up clues to his real identity. Convinced he was a Soviet agent codenamed Professor P, MI5 helped to bring his career to an end. It is only now, more than sixty years after his death, that Geoffrey Pyke's astonishing story can be told in full. The Mad Scientist of Whitehall is a many-faceted account of this enigmatic man’s genius, and reveals him as one of the great innovators of the last century.
512 pages, Hardcover
First published May 22, 2014
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2398 people want to read
About the author
Henry Hemming
10 books108 followersHenry Hemming is the author of 7 works of non-fiction including the New York Times bestseller 'The Ingenious Mr Pyke', and the Sunday Times bestseller 'M'. He has written for publications including The Washington Post, The Sunday Times, The Economist and The Times, and lives in London with his wife and children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews
December 23, 2014
Kerouac needs to be quoted here. “—the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
So I read a biography. I don't know what compelled me, but it must have not been of earthly origin. I read a biography and it was The Ingenious Mr Pyke by Henry Hemming. The story seems impossible. It is the everyman risen to incredible heights by his sheer genius, or, if Pyke himself would have it, his power of perception. HE believed anyone could be a genius.
It is astonishing how versatile and insightful the man was. He saw World War II coming before anyone else did and tried to apply preventive measures in a completely non-violent, unexpected approach. He was responsible for the first US/Canadian special forces team. He transformed kindergarten for Britain. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Henry Hemming did a fantastic job building my interest in Pyke without getting too bogged down in historical details. He portrayed genius that came just a little late for everything, and a man, beset by doubters and bureaucracy, who fought for his vision.
At the end, I was caught up in a sense of loss. Here was a man gave it all to a world that kept shoving him back until he wouldn't be bothered. Pyke was mad to live then he burned up, and the world did not mourn his passing. What would have things been like, had he lived a couple more decades? Well, it would have been interesting.
So I read a biography. I don't know what compelled me, but it must have not been of earthly origin. I read a biography and it was The Ingenious Mr Pyke by Henry Hemming. The story seems impossible. It is the everyman risen to incredible heights by his sheer genius, or, if Pyke himself would have it, his power of perception. HE believed anyone could be a genius.
It is astonishing how versatile and insightful the man was. He saw World War II coming before anyone else did and tried to apply preventive measures in a completely non-violent, unexpected approach. He was responsible for the first US/Canadian special forces team. He transformed kindergarten for Britain. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Henry Hemming did a fantastic job building my interest in Pyke without getting too bogged down in historical details. He portrayed genius that came just a little late for everything, and a man, beset by doubters and bureaucracy, who fought for his vision.
At the end, I was caught up in a sense of loss. Here was a man gave it all to a world that kept shoving him back until he wouldn't be bothered. Pyke was mad to live then he burned up, and the world did not mourn his passing. What would have things been like, had he lived a couple more decades? Well, it would have been interesting.
September 3, 2015
A little over a month ago, I chanced upon a radio program online in which the author of "Churchill's Iceman" was interviewed about its subject, Geoffrey Pyke, whose radical, innovative, and far-reaching ideas during the Second World War led to the creation of the First Special Service Force (FSSF) --- a unique, unconventional military unit made up of American and Canadian soldiers skilled in living off the land and in irregular warfare who distinguished themselves in combat from the Aleutian Islands, to Italy, France, and the Rhineland --- an underwater pipeline (which was later developed and used in sustaining the Allied drive across France during the Battle of Normandy) and the proposal to "build an aircraft carrier of reinforced ice [named Pykrete in Pyke's honor]" to help the Allies overcome the U-boat threat in the Atlantic. The more I listened to Henry Hemming speak about the life of Geoffrey Pyke, the more my curiosity about this man grew. So much so, that I bought this book.
Pyke was born in 1893, the eldest child of a family that soon found itself in straightened circumstances following the death of Pyke's father, a lawyer, when Pyke was 5. His domineering mother (from whom he later became estranged) had Pyke sent off to Wellington, at the time a typical public school for the sons of Army officers. There Pyke was teased and abused by his classmates because of his Jewish heritage. From this experience, he developed a contempt and hatred for "The Establishment". Pyke was at Wellington for 2 years, then was withdrawn and given private tutoring. Subsequently, he gained admittance to Cambridge University, where he studied law.
Upon the outbreak of the First World War, Pyke left Cambridge set on playing his part in a wholly, unique way. He came up with the idea of smuggling himself into Germany under the guise of an American journalist. It was Pyke's intent to use this cover to obtain information on how the German people were living under wartime conditions and to gauge from discreet observation what the German Army was up to. What made this all the more remarkable to me upon reading about this phase in Pyke's life was that he didn't speak German and had only a short time to perfect an American accent (one of Pyke's friends at Cambridge was American, and he used the memory of his friend to fashion his own 'American' accent). He sold the editor of the Daily Chronicle on his idea, and with a U.S. passport he obtained from an American sailor, Pyke entered Germany via Denmark in the latter part of September 1914.
Alas, Pyke's cover held for little more than a week. Should the reader of this review be interested in knowing how Pyke was found out, sent to an internment camp for Allied civilian nationals near Berlin considered "escape proof" by the Germans, where he nearly died from pneumonia, recovered, and with the help of a fellow internee (who spoke fluent German) managed to escape to neutral Holland in the late spring of 1915 --- and subsequently back to Britain ---- by all means, read "CHURCHILL'S ICEMAN." There is so much more to this man, who went on after the war to work as a journalist, educationalist, and inventor.
Geoffrey Pyke was both the perfect embodiment of the "English eccentric" and in our time, the "revolutionary figure" whose societal contributions are on the scale that completely reshape the way we live our daily lives. For example, people like Steve Jobs who became renowned for "thinking outside the box."
Pyke was born in 1893, the eldest child of a family that soon found itself in straightened circumstances following the death of Pyke's father, a lawyer, when Pyke was 5. His domineering mother (from whom he later became estranged) had Pyke sent off to Wellington, at the time a typical public school for the sons of Army officers. There Pyke was teased and abused by his classmates because of his Jewish heritage. From this experience, he developed a contempt and hatred for "The Establishment". Pyke was at Wellington for 2 years, then was withdrawn and given private tutoring. Subsequently, he gained admittance to Cambridge University, where he studied law.
Upon the outbreak of the First World War, Pyke left Cambridge set on playing his part in a wholly, unique way. He came up with the idea of smuggling himself into Germany under the guise of an American journalist. It was Pyke's intent to use this cover to obtain information on how the German people were living under wartime conditions and to gauge from discreet observation what the German Army was up to. What made this all the more remarkable to me upon reading about this phase in Pyke's life was that he didn't speak German and had only a short time to perfect an American accent (one of Pyke's friends at Cambridge was American, and he used the memory of his friend to fashion his own 'American' accent). He sold the editor of the Daily Chronicle on his idea, and with a U.S. passport he obtained from an American sailor, Pyke entered Germany via Denmark in the latter part of September 1914.
Alas, Pyke's cover held for little more than a week. Should the reader of this review be interested in knowing how Pyke was found out, sent to an internment camp for Allied civilian nationals near Berlin considered "escape proof" by the Germans, where he nearly died from pneumonia, recovered, and with the help of a fellow internee (who spoke fluent German) managed to escape to neutral Holland in the late spring of 1915 --- and subsequently back to Britain ---- by all means, read "CHURCHILL'S ICEMAN." There is so much more to this man, who went on after the war to work as a journalist, educationalist, and inventor.
Geoffrey Pyke was both the perfect embodiment of the "English eccentric" and in our time, the "revolutionary figure" whose societal contributions are on the scale that completely reshape the way we live our daily lives. For example, people like Steve Jobs who became renowned for "thinking outside the box."
July 13, 2015
Possibly the hardest to read, even dullest possible book ever written about a real-life person who so interesting.
There, I said it. I only hung in til the end because of the subject of the book, not the writing.
There, I said it. I only hung in til the end because of the subject of the book, not the writing.
June 2, 2015
Ever hear of the aircraft carrier made of ice? Ever hear of Geoffry Pyke? No? Me either until I read The Ingenious Mr. Pyke. Inventor, Fugitive, Spy.
Pkye was an English Jew who was one of Lord Montbatten's "right hand men" at Combined Operations during WW II. Pyke is credited with the idea for PLUTO, the oil pipeline under the English channel that helped keep the allies supplied with fuel after D Day. He developed an idea to build huge ships of ice that would be virtually unsinkable and could be used as aircraft carriers as a response to to the U Boat threat in the battle of the Atlantic. While the idea sounds fantastic, Churchill was a supporter and tests were done in Canada before the idea was abandoned as the U Boat menace abated through other means. He also came up with the idea that became the American-Canadian commando unit known as the Devil's Brigade which ultimately lead to the special forces of each country. Although I had never heard of Pyke until I read this book, I picked up a copy of 1966's The Devil's Brigade which was in my library but that I hadn't read, and the first chapter is about Pyke.
He also developed an innovative kindergarten, talked his way into a job as a war correspondent in WW I, smuggled himself into Germany during that war, got caught and sent to a concentration camp, and became the first person to successfully escape. Oh, and he may have been a Soviet spy.
This biography reads more like a thriller in some respects. It is a fascinating account of a very unique individual.
Pkye was an English Jew who was one of Lord Montbatten's "right hand men" at Combined Operations during WW II. Pyke is credited with the idea for PLUTO, the oil pipeline under the English channel that helped keep the allies supplied with fuel after D Day. He developed an idea to build huge ships of ice that would be virtually unsinkable and could be used as aircraft carriers as a response to to the U Boat threat in the battle of the Atlantic. While the idea sounds fantastic, Churchill was a supporter and tests were done in Canada before the idea was abandoned as the U Boat menace abated through other means. He also came up with the idea that became the American-Canadian commando unit known as the Devil's Brigade which ultimately lead to the special forces of each country. Although I had never heard of Pyke until I read this book, I picked up a copy of 1966's The Devil's Brigade which was in my library but that I hadn't read, and the first chapter is about Pyke.
He also developed an innovative kindergarten, talked his way into a job as a war correspondent in WW I, smuggled himself into Germany during that war, got caught and sent to a concentration camp, and became the first person to successfully escape. Oh, and he may have been a Soviet spy.
This biography reads more like a thriller in some respects. It is a fascinating account of a very unique individual.
May 25, 2015
The first chapters were excellent, as were the last few. Much of the middle read like a grocery list. Pyke was so creative. He was ahead of his time in many areas. He had a unique method of problem solving.
September 7, 2016
What makes the creative mind tick? How can unusual approaches to problems succeed, and what makes them fail? The Ingenious Mr. Pyke is a very engaging, inspiring, and sad biography of an odd thinker.
Geoffrey Pyke is best known as the instigator of Project Habbakuk, a wild WWII plan for the Allies to build warships out of ice (actually a compound of ice and wood pulp, dubbed "pykrete" after the inventor). Hemming situates that extraordinary idea in a lifetime of creative ideas. many of which failed or backfired.
Pyke's career began with the First World War, which is what led me to the book. When war broke out in 1914 Pyke decided to best serve Britain by sneaking into the German Empire as a war correspondent and/or spy. Although he made it in, remarkably, he was caught in less than a week and interned at the Ruhleben camp for suspicious foreign civilians, located just outside of Berlin. Pyke could easily have been stuck there for the war's duration, or simply shot, but instead managed a daring escape. Back in Britain he published an account of the adventure, which became a bestseller.
After the war's conclusion, Pyke turned his mind to... getting rich, while starting an innovative school, the former to pay for the latter. After some energetic study (and rooming with John Maynard Keynes!) he came up with a commodities trading scheme that made him a great deal of money for several years (124ff). This let him launch Malting House, a school which saw children as young scientists and investigators. Its emphasis on students as independent learners reminds me of Summerhill, which was opened roughly the same time. Blending Freudian psychology into the curriculum and pedagogy is definitely contemporary (134).
All of this fell apart in a few years, as his financial plan ran into opposition, and the school failed. Hemming observes sympathetically:
Yet Pyke didn't succumb, but turned instead to a new cause for inspiration, and that took him forward for more than a decade: stopping the Nazis. Hemming takes us through a series of pre-war projects aimed at understanding and undermining antisemitism. WWI played a role, with Pyke being inspired by the Turkish Armenian genocide (162). He published articles and magazines against the fascists. He arguably helped create the Mass Observation sociological analysis project, in order to grapple with German attitudes (170). Pyke also raised money and invented tools and vehicles to support the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. Hemming concludes that Pyke also gave some information and support to the USSR.
Once WWII broke out Pyke brazenly talked himself into a very high position, working with Mountbatten's Combined Operations outfit. There he invented pykrete, along with a strange, screw-powered vehicle for snow operations, not to mention a concept for sending materials and soldiers ashore for amphibious attacks through pipes. He also helped shape commando and special forces operations.
Pyke traveled to the US to organize his ice ships, and ran afoul of Vannevar Bush (373-4, for example) (if you don't know the name, realize he helped come up with the technology you're using now). Bush's analysis of Pyke actually rings true, describing this very odd and creative man as "someone who has a contempt for channels of authority and ducks around them" (314).
Eventually Pyke left Combined Ops, having alienated many there, and convinced MI5 that he was a Soviet spy. He committed suicide in 1948.
Hemming structures the book along chronological lines, framed by Pyke's death and charges of being a Soviet agent. Each chapter appears as a how-to guide, like "How To Defeat Nazism" or "How To Succeed in America". Along the way the book presents good quotes from Pyke, some of which are actually useful to the reader. For example,
So what makes a creative mind like Pyke's tick? Hemming thinks Pyke began by "thinking adventurously", being unafraid to look foolish. Then he challenges accepted ideas with powerful skepticism, "to keep doing so until he found the one that did not ring true - for there was always at least one." (432) Next comes stating the problem correctly. "He often found that tiny adjustments to the formulation of a problem could unlock a torrent of fresh ideas." (433) That done, Pyke would scan history and the present, looking for inspiration and above all connections. "EVERYTHING IS IRRELEVANT TILL CORRELATED WITH SOMETHING ELSE." (caps in original; 434) Pyke would further push at the problem with experiments, internal dialogues, reversing expectations (if the Nazis obsessed over "the Jewish question", why not investigate the Nazi question?), and a willingness to rapidly try out new solutions.
There are also biographical forces which shape unusual minds like Pyke's. Hemming shows a young man growing up under a series of blows and stresses, from losing his father early to being sent to military school, being abused for his Jewish heritage, and suffering from poor health. These events forces Pyke out of the ordinary.
Another lesson from Hemming's biography: the creative mind needs champions and allies. Pyke's escape from Germany in WWI required a fellow escapee. His rise in WWII depended on Mountbatten's patronage.
So why do Pykes fail? For one, they can drive hierarchies mad. Vannevar Bush:
The Ingenious Mr. Pyke is a tragic work, in that Pyke died with so many ideas defeated or unrealized, and largely unrecognized. That combination of inspiration and sadness together presents a powerful case study of extraordinary thinking and how it fares in the world.
Geoffrey Pyke is best known as the instigator of Project Habbakuk, a wild WWII plan for the Allies to build warships out of ice (actually a compound of ice and wood pulp, dubbed "pykrete" after the inventor). Hemming situates that extraordinary idea in a lifetime of creative ideas. many of which failed or backfired.
Pyke's career began with the First World War, which is what led me to the book. When war broke out in 1914 Pyke decided to best serve Britain by sneaking into the German Empire as a war correspondent and/or spy. Although he made it in, remarkably, he was caught in less than a week and interned at the Ruhleben camp for suspicious foreign civilians, located just outside of Berlin. Pyke could easily have been stuck there for the war's duration, or simply shot, but instead managed a daring escape. Back in Britain he published an account of the adventure, which became a bestseller.
He had... written a best-selling book, smuggled himself into Germany, become an amateur spy, faced execution in solitary confinement, converted to socialism and escaped from a German detention camp. All this by the age of twenty-four. (438)
After the war's conclusion, Pyke turned his mind to... getting rich, while starting an innovative school, the former to pay for the latter. After some energetic study (and rooming with John Maynard Keynes!) he came up with a commodities trading scheme that made him a great deal of money for several years (124ff). This let him launch Malting House, a school which saw children as young scientists and investigators. Its emphasis on students as independent learners reminds me of Summerhill, which was opened roughly the same time. Blending Freudian psychology into the curriculum and pedagogy is definitely contemporary (134).
All of this fell apart in a few years, as his financial plan ran into opposition, and the school failed. Hemming observes sympathetically:
Geoffrey Pyke was bankrupt, he was being sued, his experimental school had closed, he was living in a nursing home and had been described as borderline insane. But he still had not reached rock bottom. During the winter of 1929, with the global economy entering meltdown, his wife left him. (153)
Yet Pyke didn't succumb, but turned instead to a new cause for inspiration, and that took him forward for more than a decade: stopping the Nazis. Hemming takes us through a series of pre-war projects aimed at understanding and undermining antisemitism. WWI played a role, with Pyke being inspired by the Turkish Armenian genocide (162). He published articles and magazines against the fascists. He arguably helped create the Mass Observation sociological analysis project, in order to grapple with German attitudes (170). Pyke also raised money and invented tools and vehicles to support the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. Hemming concludes that Pyke also gave some information and support to the USSR.
Once WWII broke out Pyke brazenly talked himself into a very high position, working with Mountbatten's Combined Operations outfit. There he invented pykrete, along with a strange, screw-powered vehicle for snow operations, not to mention a concept for sending materials and soldiers ashore for amphibious attacks through pipes. He also helped shape commando and special forces operations.
Pyke traveled to the US to organize his ice ships, and ran afoul of Vannevar Bush (373-4, for example) (if you don't know the name, realize he helped come up with the technology you're using now). Bush's analysis of Pyke actually rings true, describing this very odd and creative man as "someone who has a contempt for channels of authority and ducks around them" (314).
Eventually Pyke left Combined Ops, having alienated many there, and convinced MI5 that he was a Soviet spy. He committed suicide in 1948.
Hemming structures the book along chronological lines, framed by Pyke's death and charges of being a Soviet agent. Each chapter appears as a how-to guide, like "How To Defeat Nazism" or "How To Succeed in America". Along the way the book presents good quotes from Pyke, some of which are actually useful to the reader. For example,
Military people... don't really plan at all. What they call planning is trying to adapt what there were taught in youth, with the minimum of alteration, to what they can see. That's why they see so little. (279)
So what makes a creative mind like Pyke's tick? Hemming thinks Pyke began by "thinking adventurously", being unafraid to look foolish. Then he challenges accepted ideas with powerful skepticism, "to keep doing so until he found the one that did not ring true - for there was always at least one." (432) Next comes stating the problem correctly. "He often found that tiny adjustments to the formulation of a problem could unlock a torrent of fresh ideas." (433) That done, Pyke would scan history and the present, looking for inspiration and above all connections. "EVERYTHING IS IRRELEVANT TILL CORRELATED WITH SOMETHING ELSE." (caps in original; 434) Pyke would further push at the problem with experiments, internal dialogues, reversing expectations (if the Nazis obsessed over "the Jewish question", why not investigate the Nazi question?), and a willingness to rapidly try out new solutions.
There are also biographical forces which shape unusual minds like Pyke's. Hemming shows a young man growing up under a series of blows and stresses, from losing his father early to being sent to military school, being abused for his Jewish heritage, and suffering from poor health. These events forces Pyke out of the ordinary.
Another lesson from Hemming's biography: the creative mind needs champions and allies. Pyke's escape from Germany in WWI required a fellow escapee. His rise in WWII depended on Mountbatten's patronage.
So why do Pykes fail? For one, they can drive hierarchies mad. Vannevar Bush:
Everyone who has ever worked in a complex pyramidical organization recognizes that there occasionally appears somewhere on the ladder of authority a dumb cluck who has to be circumvented if there is to be any progress whatever... He can throw any organization, civilian or military, into confusion. His breed should be exterminated for the good of society. (314)For another, the unusual nature of creative thought can remove the thinker from social interaction. Hemming saw Pyke's passions as backfiring:
Pyke's emotional fragility and heightened sensitivity to being sidelined appeared to make [working easily in a group] impossible. When he felt himself being marginalized he had a tendency to self-destruct, and would either cast around for a scapegoat or become difficult and behave, as one colleague put it, like an "awkward cuss." (378)Third, Pyke's habit of challenging all accepted ideas threatened those who held them, of course.
The Ingenious Mr. Pyke is a tragic work, in that Pyke died with so many ideas defeated or unrealized, and largely unrecognized. That combination of inspiration and sadness together presents a powerful case study of extraordinary thinking and how it fares in the world.
March 16, 2018
Mr. Pyke was a visionary, far ahead of his times in scope, progress, ideas, articulation, participation and engagement. His biographer is anything but. The three stars this book earns are grudging, because of the depth of research. In one of my earlier reviews I made the statement 'You know a book is going to be good when 30% of it is just references'. After reading this book, I stand corrected. Mr Pyke is an amazing individual, one of those rare geniuses who comes by once every few decades, and if he could read his biography today, he would kill himself all over again. The story itself is interesting, but the writing style is beyond tedious. Slow, plodding, and at times unnecessarily speculative, the book devotes 6 chapters to Pyke's political leanings and the MI5's thoughts on his political leanings and the evidence given for such political leanings and their lack of action towards previously mentioned political leanings and so on and so forth. 6 chapters, dedicated to a pointless discussion, which is of absolutely no relevance to his life, and pales in comparison to every single one of his achievements.
There were plenty of remarkable things that could have been expanded upon, but instead the author chooses to fixate on things that are so mind-numbingly mundane that I am forced to wonder if he blackmailed his editor into pushing ahead with this book.
The same story, if told by someone like Jeffrey Archer, would be the novel of the year, without contest. Even a lesser writer could do it more justice than what it received here.
However, now that I know who the character is, I'll be on the lookout for more, and hopefully better books about Mr. Pyke.
In short, read it for the character and the story, not the writing.
There were plenty of remarkable things that could have been expanded upon, but instead the author chooses to fixate on things that are so mind-numbingly mundane that I am forced to wonder if he blackmailed his editor into pushing ahead with this book.
The same story, if told by someone like Jeffrey Archer, would be the novel of the year, without contest. Even a lesser writer could do it more justice than what it received here.
However, now that I know who the character is, I'll be on the lookout for more, and hopefully better books about Mr. Pyke.
In short, read it for the character and the story, not the writing.
February 6, 2016
A fascinating biography of Geoffrey Pyke, an endlessly inquisitive out-of-the-box thinker who morphed through a series of roles and identities in the course of his life. During WWI he got himself into Germany as a war correspondent, was promptly betrayed and imprisoned in camp Ruhleben. By close observation of the camp routine, he was able to figure out an escape plan that took advantage of the human weaknesses of the guards as well as the limitations of the terrain. This part of the book, largely based on Pyke's own bestselling memoir of the escape, is particularly fascinating.
After WWI, married and father of a son, he started a totally new experiment in early childhood education, a school that would combine the principles of Maria Montessori with the insights of Freud. Many of the educational principles that we take for granted, such as learning-by-play and giving the child some freedom to explore the world around him/her were applied or formulated there, and the influence of "Malting House" was apparently felt in the British educational world for decades after.
By applying his insights into the relative prices of copper and tin, Pyke was able to amass a fortune... which he then lost when the big metal consortia became aware of his speculation tactics.
He then became interested in the principle of polling, and figured out a way to get specially trained "conversationalists" sent into pre-war Germany. These men and women, posing as naive British tourist, would engage ordinary Germans in conversations and find out what they really thought about Hitler, the Sudeten question, and their country's appetite and preparedness for war. Interestingly, the results seemed to indicate that only a small percentage of Germans supported Hitler or wished for war. (In view of the massive support for Hitler, this finding begs the question of bias - did the"conversationalists" only hear what they wanted to hear, or did they preferentially engage with political dissenters?)
During WWII, his lifelong fascination with ice and snow led him to propose two schemes. The first, PLOUGH, had to do with the design of a type of snowmobile, which Norwegian guerrillas could use to sabotage the Nazi occupation in that country. The second one, HABBAKUK, was a design for ships made out of a mixture of ice and sand called "pykrite", which was not only strong enough to withstand torpedos, but also didn't melt at the rate one would expect. After much initial resistance, both ideas were taken up with great enthusiasm by Lord Mountbatten and Churchill, both lovers of exciting ideas.
And so started a heady period of scientific experimentation and going back and forth between the UK, the US and Canada to get these design implemented. Alas, Pyke was his own worst enemy. His total lack of respect for the military chain of command did not endear him to some of the decision-makers in the USA. I found this part of the book rather dull, because it consisted of a description of a series of meetings, probably sourced from official minutes from the War Office. I understand that this was how decisions were made (or more often : not made) in war time, but it didn't make for very exciting reading to go through a sequence of descriptions of conferences with various bureaucrats and commanders.
Although work on the "berg-ship" progressed well, priorities shifted when the U-boat threat in the Battle of the Atlantic seemed under control and when Lord Mountbatten was assigned to a post in India, far away from London. Pyke, having lost his greatest supporter, turned morosely into himself. He kept on firing off ideas for various innovations, such as the floating harbors that played such a major role in the D-day landings, and for a pipeline under the channel to provide gasoline to the Allied forces on the Continent. His last major task was to undertake an evaluation of the problem of hiring and training nurses for the fledgling National Health Service, but he proved unable to reduce his mass of notes into a coherent report. Depressed and in pain from a mysterious long-term condition, he committed suicide in 1948.
The subject of this biography is fascinating, but I think the writing was mediocre. The book started off well, with the spectacular escape from Ruhleben, but again, since Pyke wrote a famous memoir about this feat, much of this section came straight from the horse's mouth. Several years of Pyke's life are essentially unknown, until there is the episode of his experimental school, which was well documented by various educators and collaborators. The next section, about his wartime work, is rather dull, because, as mentioned above, it's more a story about battling bureaucratic inertia than it is about science or innovation. I also found it hard to follow the jumping around in time in this section. For instance, there were frequent jumps from 1939 to 1942 and back, all within the same couple of pages, which made the book seem slightly incoherent in these sections.
My biggest complaint is about the treatment of Pyke as a potential USSR spy. The author seems to have hesitated in treating this as a straightforward narrative vs. trying to build up tension as if in a novel. So there are several places where little teasers are offered that are not fully explained or followed up. For instance, the information that MI5 became interested in Pyke to the point of having him followed, is introduced in a rather abrupt way. This then pops up a couple of times, then the discussion goes back to a meeting between Mountbatten and Pyke, then we hear of more Secret Service activities, then it's back to Pyke presenting before yet another committee... For instance, at some point it is mentioned that a passing policeman heard suspicious noises coming out of a house where Pyke had rooms at the time. This tantalizing observation is then left dangling until several chapters later where it is revealed that Pyke had a group of people recording and translating radio programs, possibly for propaganda purposes. Similarly, we are told that Pyke's "conversationalists" were trained by a mysterious "Professor P", of whom apparently nothing is known.... until several chapters later where his identity as a Russian spy was revealed. This doling out of information in a piecemeal fashion becomes irritating and does not promote careful reading - you just want to skip ahead to find out what really happened. I also did not find that the author did a very clear job of explaining the tangled web of Communists, Fellow Travelers, sympathizers, agents and spies that coexisted in England in the 1930s and 1940s. This was the same fertile ground that created the Cambridge spies, and as a matter of fact, material referring to Pyke was found in Guy Burgess' house in 1951 after his defection to the USSR. This, too, was not very satisfactorily explained. What could have been the most fascinating part of this biography was diluted and parceled out until the very end, where some of these threads come together.
It's tempting to medicalize the phenomenon of Pyke. Was he on the autism spectrum? That's a fashionable label for anyone with an inventive mind, a different way of looking at the world, and a less-than-slick social manner. Did he suffer from Addison's disease? It doesn't matter in the end. The man himself left reams of written materials behind, whether it's his book about the escape from Ruhleben, his various proposals for projects and inventions, letters to friends and relatives. What emerges is the picture of a man with a unique ability for reframing an apparently insoluble problem as a readily addressable challenge. A man with a boundless creativity, a true out-of-the-box thinker whose main driver was a hate of fascism.
After WWI, married and father of a son, he started a totally new experiment in early childhood education, a school that would combine the principles of Maria Montessori with the insights of Freud. Many of the educational principles that we take for granted, such as learning-by-play and giving the child some freedom to explore the world around him/her were applied or formulated there, and the influence of "Malting House" was apparently felt in the British educational world for decades after.
By applying his insights into the relative prices of copper and tin, Pyke was able to amass a fortune... which he then lost when the big metal consortia became aware of his speculation tactics.
He then became interested in the principle of polling, and figured out a way to get specially trained "conversationalists" sent into pre-war Germany. These men and women, posing as naive British tourist, would engage ordinary Germans in conversations and find out what they really thought about Hitler, the Sudeten question, and their country's appetite and preparedness for war. Interestingly, the results seemed to indicate that only a small percentage of Germans supported Hitler or wished for war. (In view of the massive support for Hitler, this finding begs the question of bias - did the"conversationalists" only hear what they wanted to hear, or did they preferentially engage with political dissenters?)
During WWII, his lifelong fascination with ice and snow led him to propose two schemes. The first, PLOUGH, had to do with the design of a type of snowmobile, which Norwegian guerrillas could use to sabotage the Nazi occupation in that country. The second one, HABBAKUK, was a design for ships made out of a mixture of ice and sand called "pykrite", which was not only strong enough to withstand torpedos, but also didn't melt at the rate one would expect. After much initial resistance, both ideas were taken up with great enthusiasm by Lord Mountbatten and Churchill, both lovers of exciting ideas.
And so started a heady period of scientific experimentation and going back and forth between the UK, the US and Canada to get these design implemented. Alas, Pyke was his own worst enemy. His total lack of respect for the military chain of command did not endear him to some of the decision-makers in the USA. I found this part of the book rather dull, because it consisted of a description of a series of meetings, probably sourced from official minutes from the War Office. I understand that this was how decisions were made (or more often : not made) in war time, but it didn't make for very exciting reading to go through a sequence of descriptions of conferences with various bureaucrats and commanders.
Although work on the "berg-ship" progressed well, priorities shifted when the U-boat threat in the Battle of the Atlantic seemed under control and when Lord Mountbatten was assigned to a post in India, far away from London. Pyke, having lost his greatest supporter, turned morosely into himself. He kept on firing off ideas for various innovations, such as the floating harbors that played such a major role in the D-day landings, and for a pipeline under the channel to provide gasoline to the Allied forces on the Continent. His last major task was to undertake an evaluation of the problem of hiring and training nurses for the fledgling National Health Service, but he proved unable to reduce his mass of notes into a coherent report. Depressed and in pain from a mysterious long-term condition, he committed suicide in 1948.
The subject of this biography is fascinating, but I think the writing was mediocre. The book started off well, with the spectacular escape from Ruhleben, but again, since Pyke wrote a famous memoir about this feat, much of this section came straight from the horse's mouth. Several years of Pyke's life are essentially unknown, until there is the episode of his experimental school, which was well documented by various educators and collaborators. The next section, about his wartime work, is rather dull, because, as mentioned above, it's more a story about battling bureaucratic inertia than it is about science or innovation. I also found it hard to follow the jumping around in time in this section. For instance, there were frequent jumps from 1939 to 1942 and back, all within the same couple of pages, which made the book seem slightly incoherent in these sections.
My biggest complaint is about the treatment of Pyke as a potential USSR spy. The author seems to have hesitated in treating this as a straightforward narrative vs. trying to build up tension as if in a novel. So there are several places where little teasers are offered that are not fully explained or followed up. For instance, the information that MI5 became interested in Pyke to the point of having him followed, is introduced in a rather abrupt way. This then pops up a couple of times, then the discussion goes back to a meeting between Mountbatten and Pyke, then we hear of more Secret Service activities, then it's back to Pyke presenting before yet another committee... For instance, at some point it is mentioned that a passing policeman heard suspicious noises coming out of a house where Pyke had rooms at the time. This tantalizing observation is then left dangling until several chapters later where it is revealed that Pyke had a group of people recording and translating radio programs, possibly for propaganda purposes. Similarly, we are told that Pyke's "conversationalists" were trained by a mysterious "Professor P", of whom apparently nothing is known.... until several chapters later where his identity as a Russian spy was revealed. This doling out of information in a piecemeal fashion becomes irritating and does not promote careful reading - you just want to skip ahead to find out what really happened. I also did not find that the author did a very clear job of explaining the tangled web of Communists, Fellow Travelers, sympathizers, agents and spies that coexisted in England in the 1930s and 1940s. This was the same fertile ground that created the Cambridge spies, and as a matter of fact, material referring to Pyke was found in Guy Burgess' house in 1951 after his defection to the USSR. This, too, was not very satisfactorily explained. What could have been the most fascinating part of this biography was diluted and parceled out until the very end, where some of these threads come together.
It's tempting to medicalize the phenomenon of Pyke. Was he on the autism spectrum? That's a fashionable label for anyone with an inventive mind, a different way of looking at the world, and a less-than-slick social manner. Did he suffer from Addison's disease? It doesn't matter in the end. The man himself left reams of written materials behind, whether it's his book about the escape from Ruhleben, his various proposals for projects and inventions, letters to friends and relatives. What emerges is the picture of a man with a unique ability for reframing an apparently insoluble problem as a readily addressable challenge. A man with a boundless creativity, a true out-of-the-box thinker whose main driver was a hate of fascism.
September 1, 2020
A well-researched and superbly told story of a fascinating intellectual named Pyke who became a war correspondent (with no credentials or past experience), smuggled himself into wartime Germany, became an amateur spy, faced execution in solitary confinement, made an 'impossible' escape from a German detention camp, and wrote a bestseller, - all before he was twenty-four.
And that's just the beginning! He self-taught himself about copper trading and made a fortune in the stock market, founded a revolutionary pre-school that advanced concepts in child development, and convinced Churchill to work on a snowplow guerrilla force to fight the Nazis and build an aircraft carrier out of reinforced ice, making Pyke the father of the U.S. Special Forces and one of the great innovators of the last century.
"The Ingenious Mr. Pyke" is more than just a biography. I consider it a manual in how to solve problems, develop radical ideas and lead through innovation. Here is a summary of the "Pykean Guide to Innovation" paraphrasing from the author:
1. Be intellectually adventurous and open to making mistakes and looking like a fool. ("The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month." - Fyodor Dostoevsky.)
2. Question accepted truths and develop a skeptical attitude to what you're told by undergoing what H.G. Wells called "the daily agony of scrutinizing accepted facts."
3. Keep tweaking the formulation of the problem until it can be succinctly stated. (“A problem well-stated is half-solved.”- Charles Kettering).
4. Keep an open mind and look for correlations everywhere: mine the past and present for solutions, read books and articles, watch the news, listen to podcasts and passing conversations, observe people.
5. Never get too attached to a tentative solution. Keep experimenting, trying, failing and learning.
6. Communicate your idea clearly, stating not only the salient features but also WHY it is beneficial and useful.
7. Win over influencers and early adopters by telling an amusing story. You can often break barriers and get past defenses through humour and laughter.
8. Demonstrate your idea dramatically. (In Pyke's case, he had senior leaders try to break a slab of reinforced ice with pickaxes and bullets to no avail in order to communicate his concept of developing an aircraft carrier made of ice as a strategic weapon).
9. SELL the idea with relentless momentum. Hustle.
10. Do a postmortem assessment of the implementation of your idea, recording and sharing lessons learned.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, wrote, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." Pyke was a genius who was comfortable with paradox. He believed that no question is beyond you, that resistance to new ideas was socially inherited, and that each of us can solve any problem we like, and indeed have a duty to do so.
Henry Hemming has done a great job of illustrating Pyke's burning belief of everyone having the capacity to solve any problem in this highly absorbing biography.
And that's just the beginning! He self-taught himself about copper trading and made a fortune in the stock market, founded a revolutionary pre-school that advanced concepts in child development, and convinced Churchill to work on a snowplow guerrilla force to fight the Nazis and build an aircraft carrier out of reinforced ice, making Pyke the father of the U.S. Special Forces and one of the great innovators of the last century.
"The Ingenious Mr. Pyke" is more than just a biography. I consider it a manual in how to solve problems, develop radical ideas and lead through innovation. Here is a summary of the "Pykean Guide to Innovation" paraphrasing from the author:
1. Be intellectually adventurous and open to making mistakes and looking like a fool. ("The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month." - Fyodor Dostoevsky.)
2. Question accepted truths and develop a skeptical attitude to what you're told by undergoing what H.G. Wells called "the daily agony of scrutinizing accepted facts."
3. Keep tweaking the formulation of the problem until it can be succinctly stated. (“A problem well-stated is half-solved.”- Charles Kettering).
4. Keep an open mind and look for correlations everywhere: mine the past and present for solutions, read books and articles, watch the news, listen to podcasts and passing conversations, observe people.
5. Never get too attached to a tentative solution. Keep experimenting, trying, failing and learning.
6. Communicate your idea clearly, stating not only the salient features but also WHY it is beneficial and useful.
7. Win over influencers and early adopters by telling an amusing story. You can often break barriers and get past defenses through humour and laughter.
8. Demonstrate your idea dramatically. (In Pyke's case, he had senior leaders try to break a slab of reinforced ice with pickaxes and bullets to no avail in order to communicate his concept of developing an aircraft carrier made of ice as a strategic weapon).
9. SELL the idea with relentless momentum. Hustle.
10. Do a postmortem assessment of the implementation of your idea, recording and sharing lessons learned.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, wrote, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." Pyke was a genius who was comfortable with paradox. He believed that no question is beyond you, that resistance to new ideas was socially inherited, and that each of us can solve any problem we like, and indeed have a duty to do so.
Henry Hemming has done a great job of illustrating Pyke's burning belief of everyone having the capacity to solve any problem in this highly absorbing biography.
June 17, 2020
Geoffrey Pyke was an ingenious individual who lived an exciting life, inventing the special forces and fortified ice (Pycrete), starting a new school, getting out of a prison camp, and trying to stop antisemitism, and trying to stop WWII before it started. There are good examples of his thought processes, his experiences trying to get his ideas implemented, plus a nice final section on how to think creatively. There is also a counter-history of Britain from 1920-1945. He knew Churchill, etc. but was in the background.
Equally interesting: it seems that much of Britain society were spies or fellow travelers trying to bring about a socialist, or Soviet revolt. They penetrated the publishing world, the newspapers, the BBC, using propaganda, and sending information to Stalin, all to the end of trying to ruin GB for the greater good. It makes me wonder how much of our politics and our media are the same as in Britain,
The downsides, some slow sections, especially when the author is speculating on whether Pyke was a spy, and why he committed suicide in 1948. Pyke seems to have been a semi-innocent fellow traveller, but not a total innocent, IMHO. As for his suicide, depression, hopelessness, fear of getting caught. I'd trust the note, and don't gain much by the long speculation.
Equally interesting: it seems that much of Britain society were spies or fellow travelers trying to bring about a socialist, or Soviet revolt. They penetrated the publishing world, the newspapers, the BBC, using propaganda, and sending information to Stalin, all to the end of trying to ruin GB for the greater good. It makes me wonder how much of our politics and our media are the same as in Britain,
The downsides, some slow sections, especially when the author is speculating on whether Pyke was a spy, and why he committed suicide in 1948. Pyke seems to have been a semi-innocent fellow traveller, but not a total innocent, IMHO. As for his suicide, depression, hopelessness, fear of getting caught. I'd trust the note, and don't gain much by the long speculation.
July 15, 2025
Interesting story about an interesting guy. The first half of the book was more compelling than the second half, which focused — somewhat repetitively and at length — on one particular instance of Pyke’s genius. And because the younger Pyke generally cut a more interesting/impressive figure than the ‘elder’ Pyke. Not sure much more could be said about Pyke than this bio does. I’m glad I read it, but don’t feel especially inclined to probe Pyke’s story further.
August 10, 2015
Hemming’s opening paraphrased the London Times obituary saying Geoffrey Pyke was one of the most original yet unrecognized figures of the 20th century. He was educated at Cambridge and was a Jew.
Pyke had a miserable childhood; this inspired him to earn a fortune on the London Metal exchange, and he spent this to create a school to educate his son and other young children. The revolutionary ideas of Malting House continue to influence British education 85 years after it closed.
Hemming says Pyke was a prolific inventor and worked with the government during WWII. Several of his ideas from WWII are still being used today such as the Special Forces Military Units. MI5 tracked him for years thinking he was a Soviet spy. Hemming has an interesting chapter about what MI5 had discovered about Pyke.
In WWI Pyke made a perilous journey into the heart of Germany, he was a reporter for the London Daily Chronicle. He was captured and placed into Ruhleben internment camp. He escaped and wrote a book about his ordeal which became a best seller. Hemming spent time describing Pyke’s problem solving method as well as some of his other investigative techniques, I found this somewhat interesting. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. James Langton narrated the book.
Pyke had a miserable childhood; this inspired him to earn a fortune on the London Metal exchange, and he spent this to create a school to educate his son and other young children. The revolutionary ideas of Malting House continue to influence British education 85 years after it closed.
Hemming says Pyke was a prolific inventor and worked with the government during WWII. Several of his ideas from WWII are still being used today such as the Special Forces Military Units. MI5 tracked him for years thinking he was a Soviet spy. Hemming has an interesting chapter about what MI5 had discovered about Pyke.
In WWI Pyke made a perilous journey into the heart of Germany, he was a reporter for the London Daily Chronicle. He was captured and placed into Ruhleben internment camp. He escaped and wrote a book about his ordeal which became a best seller. Hemming spent time describing Pyke’s problem solving method as well as some of his other investigative techniques, I found this somewhat interesting. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. James Langton narrated the book.
July 10, 2015
Geoffrey Pyke was a genius, an oddball, adventurous, backward and forward thinker, left leaning inventor, idea generator, go getter, and complicated person. He smuggled himself into WWI Germany, was imprisoned and escaped. He put into practice "natural child" pre-school for his son, he invented the snow mobile as a war time tool and also the use of gallup type polls for surveying attitudes about Hitler and the Nazis. The list goes on. Throughout his life he had several problems: being taken seriously with sometimes absurd ideas, being hounded by the British government who thought he was a Soviet spy, and his battle with illness (possible bi-polar and Addison's disease). A lot of this book was about British Intelligence agencies trying to figure out his political practices. I found these chapters tedious and boring so I skimmed through them. But there is no disputing that this was an interesting man who contributed so much to his country and the future of education, warfare, anti semitic hatred.
August 16, 2015
I would recommend this book because of the story not because of the writing. There were many mistakes in the book and not much of the book seemed to flow due to the incredible amount of commas. Towards the middle the book became unbearably slow and confusing due to all the new organizations and people introduced into the book. Starting the book at the end of Pyke's life left me less interested in this book because I knew how it ended. At some points there was a lack of detail and at many others there was way to much detail. For example, when there was a new character introduced it was often stated that they were asthmatic. In all of the cases that this happened, having asthma was not in any way relevant to the story and did not help create and image of the person. Another con this book had was the constant use of other languages. I did not know what the phrases meant and it only made the book more confusing.
March 15, 2016
It had all the markings of a fascinating story of a remarkable man. Geoffrey Pyke was all the things cited in the title and his escape from prison in Germany during WWI launches what appears to be a promising story and captures the reader's attention. His other schemes - experimental school in Switzerland, special forces operations in Norway, and other innovative approaches in attempting to aid Britain in the war effort are also intriguing. However the book sinks into a morass of detail about infighting among the British politicians and military, and it fails to connect many of the threads as it pops in and out of topics. It simply doesn't hold together well and becomes unbearably tedious in many sections. I recommend the early chapters but expect a lot of dry unimaginative writing after that. Hardly doing service to the very imaginative Mr. Pyke.
February 27, 2017
Geoffrey Pyke was a fascinating and surprisingly pivotal figure in history before and during WWII. I didn't know anything about him before reading this book, and I really enjoyed learning about him. The book felt a bit slow at times, which is why I ended up on the 3 star rating, but I am very glad I read this one.
March 10, 2015
A fascinating story of a fascinating, yet rarely talked about man. Well done. A must for anyone who loves spy stories or inventor stories.
December 3, 2015
I really would like to read this book to find out about Mr. Pyke but the format is so dry just couldn't continue reading.
January 10, 2016
Too much detail, sometimes, for my taste, but wow, what a fascinating character. I wonder why we haven't seen a movie about Geoffrey Pyke.
June 25, 2015
My notes from the book - not a review:
The Ingenious Mr Pyke: Inventor, Fugitive, Spy
by Henry Hemming
The author's description of Pyke's writing as showy and clever could be applied to his own. At times the book struck me as overly detailed and thick, but Hemming tells a remarkable, complex story that lends itself to many words.
Geoffrey Pyke
Cambridge, England.
The art of solving problems.
How to think like a genius.
Wellington high school educ worse than German imprisonment due to bullying, casual anti-semitism, intolerance of bookworm-ish behavior and nonconformist attitudes and behavior.
How to get into closed-off Germany? Start With the challenging question you will be caught...so where would you first get caught, and how, and work that out to avoid getting caught.
Age 21, Germany got in and to Berlin, arrested 1914 -1915, Ruhleben 10 mos, found partner spoke German. (Falk)
Every detail of the escape was rooted in Pyke’s refusal to take any assumptions for granted, whether it was the idea that the kiosk was too small to be used as a hiding place or that it was impossible to crawl across the open ground without being seen. This scepticism had led to hypotheses, experiments and proofs and now both men appeared to be free. If the lesson of Pyke’s journey into Germany was to think without fear of failure, then getting out for Ruhleben underlined the importance of challenging what you were told.
Studied fall of light and shadows. Intense thinking of solutions and observations.
Escape using science and fictive detective work.
Counter-intuition, intellect, planning.
Practice crab crawl.
Fugitives please note avoid hiding near ripe fruit.
Confidence, visualize steps to success.
Dutch border.
Dream to write front page news, also now the subject first person account.
Scoop by other reporters who took them to dinner.
MI5 blacklisted
German spy career.
WWI capable of delivering controversial matter enough to raise suspicion and provoke surveillance.
Malting House Revolutionary preschool using profits from investment futures research.
FOundation: on what happens when child asks a question. Instead of telling what a telephone was: suggest together they call it a telephone. What is it was. How could it work? What do YOU think? And then: Let’s find out!
Think of practical uses for it.
Reward curiosity and fantasy.
No discipline, rules, boundaries. Science and free-thinker. Lead to ash why and find out themselves.
One child though: we want to be made to do what we want to do.
Financial speculator, bankrupt, had to end education experiment, but in its 3 years, many of Matling House’s underlying principles became widely accepted in educational theory after his death.
Zigzagged across the 1930s like fork lightning.
Solve anti-semitism in Germany, prescient, decade before Nazi Holocaust.
Human susceptibility to myths.
Applied science to human behavior.
Sensed German leaders leading up to genocide. 1934 this was considered far-fetched.
1735 Witchcraft Act - laws prohibiting repealed once recognized witchcraft nonsense.
So: demilitarize Nazi myth by showing how it worked. Institute for the “The Nazi Question.”
Grasshopper mind.
Voluntarism build things for Spain project. Ploughs (recycled), battlefield food-warmers, ambulances.
Sphagnum moss natural wound-healing bandage.
Formulated questions carefully.
Ideas.
But execution of ideas troubles.
Lord Mountbatten: sea lord son, Dept of Wild Talents
Snowmobile Norway occupied disguise as German invention Officers’ latrine and inside Special Death Ray Dept.
Communist ties so under surveillance by MI5.
Can-do spirit.
Plough 4th realm of snow.
To America to work with army engineers on Weasel, the snowmobile.
In London: For many of the staff at the Security Service the calculus of suspicion was calibrated by class. Secrecy and trust could be assumed within the upper reaches of society, so that anyone who spoke right, acted right and had gone to the right schools was beyond suspicion - just one of the reasons why the Cambridge Spies got away with so much. The Security Service was hamstrung by this mawkish deference to the upper echelons. Jewishness, however, seemed to scramble their calculations of class. Though Pyke came from a distinguished family, had gone to Wellington and Cambridge and sounded “right,” being both Jewish and “Jewish in appearance” placed him outside MI5’s traditional undering of social background.
Vannevar Bush was a stickler for organizational protocol. He was all for working through cannels. Pyke was not. He believed in intellectual cross-fertilization and stressed the importance of seeking out those working beyond one’s official milieu.
Thought of as having contempt for channels of authority.
Pyke was starting to understand the subtleties of people’s resistance to new ideas and the importance of having support at the highest level. So the way to get Plough moving in the right direction was to win over an even more powerful body. Depended on Mountbatten who always had faith in him.
“Pyke could not write or talk without skyrocketing wit, interlarded with quotations from Shaw, Churchill, Tolstoy, the Bible, or whatever apt epigram he might dredge from his vast arsenal,” wrote George Ball, adding, “it did not endear him to the soldiers.”
Bush wanted him to have no contact with OSRD engineers.
Propensity for breaking protocol, regarded opponents as obstructionists and idiots.
inglorious Bastards inspiration.
Left his mark on No Am military - creation of US Special Forces and Canadian unit.
In US:
Change the shape of the war, and perhaps the future of warfare itself.
Innovation: frozen airfield.
Iceberg turn into floating airfield. Tow into U-Boat Alley in the mid-Atlantic, and aircraft based on it could lay waste to nearby enemy submarines. ANd fraction of cost of building a new aircraft carrier from steel. Ice was so cheap why not build an archipelago of these customized floating islands?
And berg-ship hard to destroy, easy to repair holes at sea, unsinkable. Move through tropics.
Pykrete (Habbakuk) - resilient ice-like platform. Quebec presented.
Compared the compressive, tensile and flexural strength of both pure ice and Pykrete…..
Also Mulberry: floating harbor to be towed to northern France on D-Day and PLUTO - oil pipeline lain underneath the Channel to supply the Allied forces (now replicated around the world)
Superman comic plotline floating fortress and security risk reputation = problems.
Human and animal power more efficient in converting energy than machines, he surmised. Cyclo-Tractors - pedal-powered locomotives.
Felt robbed of his ideas. Last was nurse recruitment.
Barbiturates killed self, maybe Addison’s Disease adrenal disorder.
Loose end: was he working for Moscow?
Very anti-fascist more than Communist leaning.
George Bernard Shaw - he revered his writing.
Everyman guide to thinking like a genius.
Scrutinize accepted facts. Impertinent. Don’t dismiss crazy ideas. Correct formulation of a problem s more than halfway to its solution.
Research, mine the past for historical analogies and lost solutions.
Reversal: Nazis established center to study the Jewish Question, his would study the Nazi Question.
Be willing to challenge a tradition or habit. Disruptive.
Be comfortable with paradox.
Be ready to address objections and help others see the logic and reason. Buy-in.
Win over new supporters - early adopters.
Appeal to curiosity by presenting the idea as a story with a beginning, middle and end.
Find well-placed partner to help pitch, extend the ownership. “Our idea.”
Persisted to take his ideas to the highest level.
“I have to behave rather like Nature, throwing up a hundred million pollen on the chance that one may do its duty.”
Post-mortems.
The Ingenious Mr Pyke: Inventor, Fugitive, Spy
by Henry Hemming
The author's description of Pyke's writing as showy and clever could be applied to his own. At times the book struck me as overly detailed and thick, but Hemming tells a remarkable, complex story that lends itself to many words.
Geoffrey Pyke
Cambridge, England.
The art of solving problems.
How to think like a genius.
Wellington high school educ worse than German imprisonment due to bullying, casual anti-semitism, intolerance of bookworm-ish behavior and nonconformist attitudes and behavior.
How to get into closed-off Germany? Start With the challenging question you will be caught...so where would you first get caught, and how, and work that out to avoid getting caught.
Age 21, Germany got in and to Berlin, arrested 1914 -1915, Ruhleben 10 mos, found partner spoke German. (Falk)
Every detail of the escape was rooted in Pyke’s refusal to take any assumptions for granted, whether it was the idea that the kiosk was too small to be used as a hiding place or that it was impossible to crawl across the open ground without being seen. This scepticism had led to hypotheses, experiments and proofs and now both men appeared to be free. If the lesson of Pyke’s journey into Germany was to think without fear of failure, then getting out for Ruhleben underlined the importance of challenging what you were told.
Studied fall of light and shadows. Intense thinking of solutions and observations.
Escape using science and fictive detective work.
Counter-intuition, intellect, planning.
Practice crab crawl.
Fugitives please note avoid hiding near ripe fruit.
Confidence, visualize steps to success.
Dutch border.
Dream to write front page news, also now the subject first person account.
Scoop by other reporters who took them to dinner.
MI5 blacklisted
German spy career.
WWI capable of delivering controversial matter enough to raise suspicion and provoke surveillance.
Malting House Revolutionary preschool using profits from investment futures research.
FOundation: on what happens when child asks a question. Instead of telling what a telephone was: suggest together they call it a telephone. What is it was. How could it work? What do YOU think? And then: Let’s find out!
Think of practical uses for it.
Reward curiosity and fantasy.
No discipline, rules, boundaries. Science and free-thinker. Lead to ash why and find out themselves.
One child though: we want to be made to do what we want to do.
Financial speculator, bankrupt, had to end education experiment, but in its 3 years, many of Matling House’s underlying principles became widely accepted in educational theory after his death.
Zigzagged across the 1930s like fork lightning.
Solve anti-semitism in Germany, prescient, decade before Nazi Holocaust.
Human susceptibility to myths.
Applied science to human behavior.
Sensed German leaders leading up to genocide. 1934 this was considered far-fetched.
1735 Witchcraft Act - laws prohibiting repealed once recognized witchcraft nonsense.
So: demilitarize Nazi myth by showing how it worked. Institute for the “The Nazi Question.”
Grasshopper mind.
Voluntarism build things for Spain project. Ploughs (recycled), battlefield food-warmers, ambulances.
Sphagnum moss natural wound-healing bandage.
Formulated questions carefully.
Ideas.
But execution of ideas troubles.
Lord Mountbatten: sea lord son, Dept of Wild Talents
Snowmobile Norway occupied disguise as German invention Officers’ latrine and inside Special Death Ray Dept.
Communist ties so under surveillance by MI5.
Can-do spirit.
Plough 4th realm of snow.
To America to work with army engineers on Weasel, the snowmobile.
In London: For many of the staff at the Security Service the calculus of suspicion was calibrated by class. Secrecy and trust could be assumed within the upper reaches of society, so that anyone who spoke right, acted right and had gone to the right schools was beyond suspicion - just one of the reasons why the Cambridge Spies got away with so much. The Security Service was hamstrung by this mawkish deference to the upper echelons. Jewishness, however, seemed to scramble their calculations of class. Though Pyke came from a distinguished family, had gone to Wellington and Cambridge and sounded “right,” being both Jewish and “Jewish in appearance” placed him outside MI5’s traditional undering of social background.
Vannevar Bush was a stickler for organizational protocol. He was all for working through cannels. Pyke was not. He believed in intellectual cross-fertilization and stressed the importance of seeking out those working beyond one’s official milieu.
Thought of as having contempt for channels of authority.
Pyke was starting to understand the subtleties of people’s resistance to new ideas and the importance of having support at the highest level. So the way to get Plough moving in the right direction was to win over an even more powerful body. Depended on Mountbatten who always had faith in him.
“Pyke could not write or talk without skyrocketing wit, interlarded with quotations from Shaw, Churchill, Tolstoy, the Bible, or whatever apt epigram he might dredge from his vast arsenal,” wrote George Ball, adding, “it did not endear him to the soldiers.”
Bush wanted him to have no contact with OSRD engineers.
Propensity for breaking protocol, regarded opponents as obstructionists and idiots.
inglorious Bastards inspiration.
Left his mark on No Am military - creation of US Special Forces and Canadian unit.
In US:
Change the shape of the war, and perhaps the future of warfare itself.
Innovation: frozen airfield.
Iceberg turn into floating airfield. Tow into U-Boat Alley in the mid-Atlantic, and aircraft based on it could lay waste to nearby enemy submarines. ANd fraction of cost of building a new aircraft carrier from steel. Ice was so cheap why not build an archipelago of these customized floating islands?
And berg-ship hard to destroy, easy to repair holes at sea, unsinkable. Move through tropics.
Pykrete (Habbakuk) - resilient ice-like platform. Quebec presented.
Compared the compressive, tensile and flexural strength of both pure ice and Pykrete…..
Also Mulberry: floating harbor to be towed to northern France on D-Day and PLUTO - oil pipeline lain underneath the Channel to supply the Allied forces (now replicated around the world)
Superman comic plotline floating fortress and security risk reputation = problems.
Human and animal power more efficient in converting energy than machines, he surmised. Cyclo-Tractors - pedal-powered locomotives.
Felt robbed of his ideas. Last was nurse recruitment.
Barbiturates killed self, maybe Addison’s Disease adrenal disorder.
Loose end: was he working for Moscow?
Very anti-fascist more than Communist leaning.
George Bernard Shaw - he revered his writing.
Everyman guide to thinking like a genius.
Scrutinize accepted facts. Impertinent. Don’t dismiss crazy ideas. Correct formulation of a problem s more than halfway to its solution.
Research, mine the past for historical analogies and lost solutions.
Reversal: Nazis established center to study the Jewish Question, his would study the Nazi Question.
Be willing to challenge a tradition or habit. Disruptive.
Be comfortable with paradox.
Be ready to address objections and help others see the logic and reason. Buy-in.
Win over new supporters - early adopters.
Appeal to curiosity by presenting the idea as a story with a beginning, middle and end.
Find well-placed partner to help pitch, extend the ownership. “Our idea.”
Persisted to take his ideas to the highest level.
“I have to behave rather like Nature, throwing up a hundred million pollen on the chance that one may do its duty.”
Post-mortems.
August 10, 2022
This absorbing biography epitomizes the cliché that fact is stranger than fiction. As an adult, Geoffrey Nathaniel Joseph Pyke became a caricature of the brilliant, absent-minded professor whose life was a series adventures and projects that makes fictional thrillers look tame. Mr. Hemming brings Pyke to life and tackles the question that dogged him to his death and tainted his legacy. Was he "merely" an eccentric genius who never quite found the right niche for his talents or was he something more sinister? Throughout his entire adult life he was suspected of being a political chameleon, first a German spy then a Soviet spy. If he was not a spy in the strict sense, like the Cambridge Five, was he a 'fellow traveler' who provided aid and support for Communist agents because of political sympathy? Or was he what MI5 thought, the mysterious Professor P., a senior Comintern official working undercover in England? It's difficult to believe the mercurial, self-destructive Pyke was ever a Soviet agent, but everything about Pyke is difficult to believe! He is a contradiction at every level. Mr. Hemming presents the evidence quite well, so each reader can weigh it and make up his or her own mind. That challenge alone makes this book worth reading, but along the way we get a fascinating look at Great Britain during three decades that took it from the apex of Imperial power to post-war austerity and a diminished role in the shadows of the new Superpowers. Recommended to anyone interested in the period, Soviet espionage in Great Britain or the nature of genius.
September 16, 2016
Geoffrey Pyke was a very interesting man, far ahead of his time in how he innovated. He is the first disrupter I have read about, other than Winston Churchill.
I had never heard of him, though I had heard of the ideas he had come up with. Telling in this regard is the title of the book in the English edition “Churchill’s Iceman” with Pyke’s name only in the sub-title. Mr Hemming has written a wonderful nugget of a book on this quite amazing, contradictory person.
Pyke’s first foray into “Pykeness” was, finding himself stuck in Denmark at the outbreak of World War I, when he wired Reuters offering to be their war correspondent there. Not having anyone else on the spot, amazingly, given he had no credentials, they agreed! Being in the right place at the right time. After a few useful reports on German naval movement he was asked to leave.
He went straight to Fleet Street in London, offering his services to the Daily Chronicle to be their reporter, in of all places, Berlin! His boldness again got him the needed accreditation, but it was left to him get himself to Berlin.
That’s when the real “Pykeness” kicked in. It is about identifying the right problem, and ignoring all conventional wisdom that might tell you a solution is impossible, to find and do just that.
Pyke defined the problem not conventionally as “How does a British war correspondent get to Berlin at a time like this?” (my para-phrasing). Instead he asked himself, “How does an English speaking person get to Berlin”? He decided to switch nationalities and managing to get an American passport, slid into Germany, and Berlin, quietly using sleepy ports and slow trains, where vigilance was less.
But, betrayed by the man he had planned to use as a conduit to send reports out, he found himself captive. After a harrowing 4 months in solitary, he is sent in January 2015 to Ruhleben, a camp for interred Britishers 500 miles away from the Dutch border. Following “Pykeness” he escapes with a fellow prisoner Teddy Falk, reaching London in July 1915.
Then starts the 30 years of Pyke being shadowing by British authorities. It begins with his studies of British ports during World War I, the question about how he got sent to Ruhleben, and later on, the suspicions of him being a Communist master spy. This dogged him through his life, and he did nothing to calm worried minds.
After some years, his marriage to Margaret and the birth of his son David, Pyke formed his next question or problem, “How to bring up a child?” His answer was to let their minds roam free, implemented (for once!) with his Matling House school. At the same time he dabbled in commodity trading of all things. This eventually led to financial chaos and the collapse of his marriage. This took most of the 1920’s.
The 1930’s started with a gap of a few years that worried his watchers in British intelligence later.
Driven by Edward VIII’s abdication, his next foray was into the study what people in general thought, that lead to the Mass Observation (MO) movement, used intensively during World War II.
Next he started VIAS (Voluntary Industrial Aid to Spain) where he tried to solve problems like providing ambulance assistance using voluntary worker credits instead of money. The worker credits thing didn’t work, but he was able to provide reconditioned vehicles as ambulances.
With Hitler rapidly hurtling to start World War II, Pyke heard that most Germans were not in favour, but being ill-informed, were not resisting. His answer was, “lets tell the Germans what they think” and so he set about doing that. Unfortunately, in end August 1939, it was too late.
In Feb 1942 starts the most productive period of Pyke’s life when he barges into Mountbatten’s office, then the newly appointed Chief of Combined Operations. This was a post created by Churchill, whose fertile mind realized that future military operations would need coordination across land, sea & air forces (till then non-existent). Mountbatten liked what he heard, and for the next 18 months, starts a magnificent relationship. It’s between Mountbatten (open to new ideas and has the ear of Churchill), and Pyke (who defines problems the right way and suggests unorthodox solutions).
It starts with Norway, where Pyke suggests the development of an elite force equipped with outrageous snow-mobiles to inflict maximum damage. Operation Plough doesn’t start due to Pyke’s inability to deal with “non-Pykers”, but eventually the elite force and the Weasel snowmobile did wreak havoc.
In summer 1942, Pyke comes up with his most famous idea, building unsinkable, huge, cheap ships with ice. Many Pyke ideas are totally original to him. But one of the key aspects of “Pykeness” was, once having identified a problem, look at all past ideas. Trying to solve the problem of winning the Battle of the Atlantic, Pyke had come across a 1924 National Geographic article on how solid ice was, and from that kernel grew his idea.
Mountbatten was sold. He got Churchill's support by demonstrated it his bath. And at the famous Anglo-US conference in 1943 where he did the same by firing his pistol into a block of “pykrete”.
The winning of the Battle of the Atlantic against German U-Boats by conventional means and administrative intrusions meant the end of this amazing idea.
After that it was downhill for Pyke. Mountbatten went to Asia and he had no mentor. Pyke committing suicide on Feb 21, 1948. The possibility of Addison's disease maybe a cause but we will never know for sure.
Was Pyke a communist master spy? With the latest declassified information, we learn of reports discovered in Anthony Blunts flat (one of the famous Cambridge spies) that indicates Pyke was giving classified information to Peter Smollett, now known to be a Russian spy. Maybe it’s the romantic in me but I loathe to think of Pyke as one of the Cambridge gang. If he did any of this stuff, I prefer to think he was acting as an “anti-fascist” as he described himself.
On a personal note, I found this book in this amazing bookshop in of all places, Koh Samui airport in Thailand. It’s a tiny airport and you can’t miss it. It’s on the way from checkin to security. Drop in.
I had never heard of him, though I had heard of the ideas he had come up with. Telling in this regard is the title of the book in the English edition “Churchill’s Iceman” with Pyke’s name only in the sub-title. Mr Hemming has written a wonderful nugget of a book on this quite amazing, contradictory person.
Pyke’s first foray into “Pykeness” was, finding himself stuck in Denmark at the outbreak of World War I, when he wired Reuters offering to be their war correspondent there. Not having anyone else on the spot, amazingly, given he had no credentials, they agreed! Being in the right place at the right time. After a few useful reports on German naval movement he was asked to leave.
He went straight to Fleet Street in London, offering his services to the Daily Chronicle to be their reporter, in of all places, Berlin! His boldness again got him the needed accreditation, but it was left to him get himself to Berlin.
That’s when the real “Pykeness” kicked in. It is about identifying the right problem, and ignoring all conventional wisdom that might tell you a solution is impossible, to find and do just that.
Pyke defined the problem not conventionally as “How does a British war correspondent get to Berlin at a time like this?” (my para-phrasing). Instead he asked himself, “How does an English speaking person get to Berlin”? He decided to switch nationalities and managing to get an American passport, slid into Germany, and Berlin, quietly using sleepy ports and slow trains, where vigilance was less.
But, betrayed by the man he had planned to use as a conduit to send reports out, he found himself captive. After a harrowing 4 months in solitary, he is sent in January 2015 to Ruhleben, a camp for interred Britishers 500 miles away from the Dutch border. Following “Pykeness” he escapes with a fellow prisoner Teddy Falk, reaching London in July 1915.
Then starts the 30 years of Pyke being shadowing by British authorities. It begins with his studies of British ports during World War I, the question about how he got sent to Ruhleben, and later on, the suspicions of him being a Communist master spy. This dogged him through his life, and he did nothing to calm worried minds.
After some years, his marriage to Margaret and the birth of his son David, Pyke formed his next question or problem, “How to bring up a child?” His answer was to let their minds roam free, implemented (for once!) with his Matling House school. At the same time he dabbled in commodity trading of all things. This eventually led to financial chaos and the collapse of his marriage. This took most of the 1920’s.
The 1930’s started with a gap of a few years that worried his watchers in British intelligence later.
Driven by Edward VIII’s abdication, his next foray was into the study what people in general thought, that lead to the Mass Observation (MO) movement, used intensively during World War II.
Next he started VIAS (Voluntary Industrial Aid to Spain) where he tried to solve problems like providing ambulance assistance using voluntary worker credits instead of money. The worker credits thing didn’t work, but he was able to provide reconditioned vehicles as ambulances.
With Hitler rapidly hurtling to start World War II, Pyke heard that most Germans were not in favour, but being ill-informed, were not resisting. His answer was, “lets tell the Germans what they think” and so he set about doing that. Unfortunately, in end August 1939, it was too late.
In Feb 1942 starts the most productive period of Pyke’s life when he barges into Mountbatten’s office, then the newly appointed Chief of Combined Operations. This was a post created by Churchill, whose fertile mind realized that future military operations would need coordination across land, sea & air forces (till then non-existent). Mountbatten liked what he heard, and for the next 18 months, starts a magnificent relationship. It’s between Mountbatten (open to new ideas and has the ear of Churchill), and Pyke (who defines problems the right way and suggests unorthodox solutions).
It starts with Norway, where Pyke suggests the development of an elite force equipped with outrageous snow-mobiles to inflict maximum damage. Operation Plough doesn’t start due to Pyke’s inability to deal with “non-Pykers”, but eventually the elite force and the Weasel snowmobile did wreak havoc.
In summer 1942, Pyke comes up with his most famous idea, building unsinkable, huge, cheap ships with ice. Many Pyke ideas are totally original to him. But one of the key aspects of “Pykeness” was, once having identified a problem, look at all past ideas. Trying to solve the problem of winning the Battle of the Atlantic, Pyke had come across a 1924 National Geographic article on how solid ice was, and from that kernel grew his idea.
Mountbatten was sold. He got Churchill's support by demonstrated it his bath. And at the famous Anglo-US conference in 1943 where he did the same by firing his pistol into a block of “pykrete”.
The winning of the Battle of the Atlantic against German U-Boats by conventional means and administrative intrusions meant the end of this amazing idea.
After that it was downhill for Pyke. Mountbatten went to Asia and he had no mentor. Pyke committing suicide on Feb 21, 1948. The possibility of Addison's disease maybe a cause but we will never know for sure.
Was Pyke a communist master spy? With the latest declassified information, we learn of reports discovered in Anthony Blunts flat (one of the famous Cambridge spies) that indicates Pyke was giving classified information to Peter Smollett, now known to be a Russian spy. Maybe it’s the romantic in me but I loathe to think of Pyke as one of the Cambridge gang. If he did any of this stuff, I prefer to think he was acting as an “anti-fascist” as he described himself.
On a personal note, I found this book in this amazing bookshop in of all places, Koh Samui airport in Thailand. It’s a tiny airport and you can’t miss it. It’s on the way from checkin to security. Drop in.
August 22, 2017
3.5 stars. Pyke is a fascinating figure who lived through extraordinary times (WWI, the 1920s stock market speculation, the rise of fascism, and WWII) and made discoveries/inventions in a wide array of fields. By questioning conventional wisdom and subjecting his theories to rigorous scrutiny, Pyke contributed some astonishing ideas, including (strangely for an Englishman) the creation of the U.S. special forces. He was also a committed leftist, especially because of his anti-fascist views, radicalized by the 1930s. British intelligence suspected him of Soviet ties, but the evidence is mixed.
These days, there is no Soviet menace and the term "Communist" is thrown around casually to indicate any individual with views slightly to the left of your own. That was not the case in the 1930s and 40s. The Soviet threat was real and I had not realized how deeply Soviet spies and their international organization the Comintern had penetrated the U.S., British, and other Western governments. The book dragged a bit in the middle, but it's interesting stuff.
These days, there is no Soviet menace and the term "Communist" is thrown around casually to indicate any individual with views slightly to the left of your own. That was not the case in the 1930s and 40s. The Soviet threat was real and I had not realized how deeply Soviet spies and their international organization the Comintern had penetrated the U.S., British, and other Western governments. The book dragged a bit in the middle, but it's interesting stuff.
July 25, 2025
This was a brilliant inventor. He approached a problem from a completely different perspective than other people.
The first half of this book was extremely interesting, and the last chapter was a helpful sum-up, but the last half of the book otherwise really began to drag. There were so many minor characters to keep track of, who were mentioned mainly because they were helpful to Pyke in some way (many supported his work with donations, for instance).
What made this book interesting to me were his many inventions. They were so creative and "out of the box" that he had much trouble convincing those in charge to pay any attention to him, and he met resistance from many angles despite the backing of people such as Mountbatten, or even Churchill himself.
A worthy read, but not one I will be reading again. A different book about this man and his inventiveness would be welcome to me.
The first half of this book was extremely interesting, and the last chapter was a helpful sum-up, but the last half of the book otherwise really began to drag. There were so many minor characters to keep track of, who were mentioned mainly because they were helpful to Pyke in some way (many supported his work with donations, for instance).
What made this book interesting to me were his many inventions. They were so creative and "out of the box" that he had much trouble convincing those in charge to pay any attention to him, and he met resistance from many angles despite the backing of people such as Mountbatten, or even Churchill himself.
A worthy read, but not one I will be reading again. A different book about this man and his inventiveness would be welcome to me.
August 9, 2017
Fascinating, cleverly written , but sad.
So often genius is shrugged off by closed minds as eccentricity. But Geoffrey Pyke managed to gain the ear and admiration of both Earl Mountbatten and Churchill during and after World War Two. What appeared at first to be madcap ideas, proved to be brilliant ways of beating the Fascists. Pyke struggled with illness, which sometimes interfered with his progress , yet he will down history as having paved the way for some of the best solutions to problems in both the military and private sectors in his time. Sadly, he took his own life in his early fifties.
So often genius is shrugged off by closed minds as eccentricity. But Geoffrey Pyke managed to gain the ear and admiration of both Earl Mountbatten and Churchill during and after World War Two. What appeared at first to be madcap ideas, proved to be brilliant ways of beating the Fascists. Pyke struggled with illness, which sometimes interfered with his progress , yet he will down history as having paved the way for some of the best solutions to problems in both the military and private sectors in his time. Sadly, he took his own life in his early fifties.
January 1, 2019
I don't often write book reviews anymore but I feel I must make an exception here. I thoroughly enjoyed 'Churchill's Iceman' which tells the story of the mostly unheard of Geoffrey Pyke. Henry Hemming helps bring to life the character of Pyke, and perfectly captures his brilliance. I picked this up by chance in the sale in Blackwells when I was looking for something to read whilst I hid from torrential rain in Costa, and I was instantly captivated, and have been recommending this book to just about anyone.
August 9, 2023
ebook notes: narrative text concluded on p. 465; the remainder was notes, etc.
I think I originally heard about Pykrete via Mythbusters , though I don't recall them going into much detail about its creator. This was an interesting story about a man who, in many ways, was ahead of his times. I enjoyed reading about Geoffrey Pyke, though I thought the chapters on World War II bogged down a bit (that's more personal preference than any fault of the writer, though). I found the ending somewhat unexpected (it would be spoilery to say more).
I think I originally heard about Pykrete via Mythbusters , though I don't recall them going into much detail about its creator. This was an interesting story about a man who, in many ways, was ahead of his times. I enjoyed reading about Geoffrey Pyke, though I thought the chapters on World War II bogged down a bit (that's more personal preference than any fault of the writer, though). I found the ending somewhat unexpected (it would be spoilery to say more).
April 1, 2015
Pyke could only be described as a polymath and a boffin (early 20th century slang for a nerd), who was considered to be ‘different’ even by the other boffins at college. Raised as an orthodox Jew, he suffered so much discrimination that his parents had him tutored at home until he went to Cambridge to read law.
In his life Pyke was an inventor, war reporter, prisoner of war, escaped prisoner, stock trader, campaigner, military strategist, husband, father, educator, misunderstood genius. His mind stood among the first rank in thinking outside the box, before it had a name. Like many brilliant men, he may have been bi-polar and ended his life being hounded like Turing but for being a proto-communist, committing suicide at the age of 54.
Turned down by the military in WW1 (he had a weak heart), he decided to become a war correspondent (a la Winston Churchill and Rudyard Kipling). He smuggled himself into Germany through Denmark using an American passport. But within a week he was arrested by the Germans as a spy. He spent three months in solitary confinement before being sent to a prison camp from which no one had successfully escaped. With another English prisoner he methodically studied every failed escape and devised his own plan.
They made their way across Germany by train and walked the last 80 miles to the Dutch border where they were captured, by a Dutch Policeman. They hadn’t realized they had crossed the border. Pyke was the first Englishman to have gotten in an out of Germany since the war began. His articles, lectures and a book made him famous (and well to do).
He married near the end of the war and began independently investing in the commodities markets. He had his own methodology and made his first fortune. His son was born in 1921 and he turned his energies towards creating a non-traditional school. The school would foster the individual development of children. There would be no curriculum per se, and the children were to be given great freedom in what they studied and were supported rather than punished.
The teachers were seen as observers and researcher who would assist in the children in their pursuits, while documenting their failures and successes. The school was seen as a great laboratory for childhood learning studies and the documentation was used by educators for many years. Unfortunately, it was a financial failure and closed after ten years. By 1927 he was broke and suffering from severe depression, his wife left him with their son (but they never divorced). He went to live in an unheated shack in the countryside living on handouts from his friends.
But he didn’t give up thinking and inventing. During the Spanish Civil War he raised money to ship ambulances to the Republicans. Then he designed a motorcycle sidecar that could be used to bring out wounded from the battlefield. He also designed a bandage made of muslin and dried peat which could be used as a substitute for cotton wadding. He is unable to control himself at meetings, suffering from alternating manic and depressive moods. Most of his old friends tend to avoid him.
In 1934 he begins to set-up antifascist groups to counter the publicity that Hitler and Mussolini are receiving in the British newspapers. Pyke considered the problem of finding out exactly what the German people actually thought of the Nazi regime. His idea was to perform an opinion poll in secret by sending volunteers (he would train personally) to Germany to interview ordinary people. The interviewers would pose as golfers on a tour of Germany, inserted questions into everyday conversation. The poll finds that most Germans aren’t in favor of war, but by the time his people get back to London, Germany has attacked Poland in consort with Stalin.
During WW2, he managers to wrangle himself a job with a ‘think tank,’ proposing ideas to help with the war effort. He designed a precursor to the snowmobile to be used by specially trained troops to work behind the German lines in Norway. The military group that comes out of this training become the 1st Special Services Force, a joint Canadian-American commando group.
Some of his ideas seem hairbrained, as he develops an aircraft carrier made of a special compound of ice and wood chips (pykrete), which can sustain hits from bombs and torpedoes. His most successful creation though is the floating docks (mulberries) that are used in the D-Day invasion.
After the war, Pyke was given a commission to look into the problems of the National Health Service. He continued with his unconventional ideas, he wrote and broadcast for the BBC. But the more he worked to achieve a better world, the more erratic and pessimistic he became, this led to him being widely mocked in the media. He was called in front of the English equivalent of the McCarthy House Un-American Activities Committee, accused of having been a spy for the Soviets during the war.
No longer being able to deal with the strain of being falsely accused, and with his mental health deteriorating, he committed suicide in 1948 at the age of 54. He, his inventions and accomplishments quickly faded into obscurity.
This is the story of a haunted genius, with a moody and explosive personality. One wonders what he could have accomplished had he been able to deal with his own demons.
Zeb Kantrowitz zworstblog.blogspot.com zebsblog@gmail.com
In his life Pyke was an inventor, war reporter, prisoner of war, escaped prisoner, stock trader, campaigner, military strategist, husband, father, educator, misunderstood genius. His mind stood among the first rank in thinking outside the box, before it had a name. Like many brilliant men, he may have been bi-polar and ended his life being hounded like Turing but for being a proto-communist, committing suicide at the age of 54.
Turned down by the military in WW1 (he had a weak heart), he decided to become a war correspondent (a la Winston Churchill and Rudyard Kipling). He smuggled himself into Germany through Denmark using an American passport. But within a week he was arrested by the Germans as a spy. He spent three months in solitary confinement before being sent to a prison camp from which no one had successfully escaped. With another English prisoner he methodically studied every failed escape and devised his own plan.
They made their way across Germany by train and walked the last 80 miles to the Dutch border where they were captured, by a Dutch Policeman. They hadn’t realized they had crossed the border. Pyke was the first Englishman to have gotten in an out of Germany since the war began. His articles, lectures and a book made him famous (and well to do).
He married near the end of the war and began independently investing in the commodities markets. He had his own methodology and made his first fortune. His son was born in 1921 and he turned his energies towards creating a non-traditional school. The school would foster the individual development of children. There would be no curriculum per se, and the children were to be given great freedom in what they studied and were supported rather than punished.
The teachers were seen as observers and researcher who would assist in the children in their pursuits, while documenting their failures and successes. The school was seen as a great laboratory for childhood learning studies and the documentation was used by educators for many years. Unfortunately, it was a financial failure and closed after ten years. By 1927 he was broke and suffering from severe depression, his wife left him with their son (but they never divorced). He went to live in an unheated shack in the countryside living on handouts from his friends.
But he didn’t give up thinking and inventing. During the Spanish Civil War he raised money to ship ambulances to the Republicans. Then he designed a motorcycle sidecar that could be used to bring out wounded from the battlefield. He also designed a bandage made of muslin and dried peat which could be used as a substitute for cotton wadding. He is unable to control himself at meetings, suffering from alternating manic and depressive moods. Most of his old friends tend to avoid him.
In 1934 he begins to set-up antifascist groups to counter the publicity that Hitler and Mussolini are receiving in the British newspapers. Pyke considered the problem of finding out exactly what the German people actually thought of the Nazi regime. His idea was to perform an opinion poll in secret by sending volunteers (he would train personally) to Germany to interview ordinary people. The interviewers would pose as golfers on a tour of Germany, inserted questions into everyday conversation. The poll finds that most Germans aren’t in favor of war, but by the time his people get back to London, Germany has attacked Poland in consort with Stalin.
During WW2, he managers to wrangle himself a job with a ‘think tank,’ proposing ideas to help with the war effort. He designed a precursor to the snowmobile to be used by specially trained troops to work behind the German lines in Norway. The military group that comes out of this training become the 1st Special Services Force, a joint Canadian-American commando group.
Some of his ideas seem hairbrained, as he develops an aircraft carrier made of a special compound of ice and wood chips (pykrete), which can sustain hits from bombs and torpedoes. His most successful creation though is the floating docks (mulberries) that are used in the D-Day invasion.
After the war, Pyke was given a commission to look into the problems of the National Health Service. He continued with his unconventional ideas, he wrote and broadcast for the BBC. But the more he worked to achieve a better world, the more erratic and pessimistic he became, this led to him being widely mocked in the media. He was called in front of the English equivalent of the McCarthy House Un-American Activities Committee, accused of having been a spy for the Soviets during the war.
No longer being able to deal with the strain of being falsely accused, and with his mental health deteriorating, he committed suicide in 1948 at the age of 54. He, his inventions and accomplishments quickly faded into obscurity.
This is the story of a haunted genius, with a moody and explosive personality. One wonders what he could have accomplished had he been able to deal with his own demons.
Zeb Kantrowitz zworstblog.blogspot.com zebsblog@gmail.com
May 14, 2019
I really shouldn’t even give this a star rating. So much happened since I started reading this book- I got an emergency c-section at 26 weeks, lost the child, and was diagnosed with a brain tumor roughly 2x5 cm. As you can imagine, this severely affected my attempt to read this book. I was enjoying it before shit hit the fan. I found the Malting House research and Ruhlehben escape to be very interesting. However, once it got to Pykrete and the Plough I was severely distracted.
June 11, 2019
Quite the most extraordinary story I have read for years.
An incredible tale of a free-thinking loner whose genius came up with some of the most ground-breaking (and in some cases just plain strange) ideas of any age - this is a gloriously refreshing biography of someone who should be far more well-known.
Fabulously researched, supremely well written, and a treasure trove of a delight to read.
Brilliant.
An incredible tale of a free-thinking loner whose genius came up with some of the most ground-breaking (and in some cases just plain strange) ideas of any age - this is a gloriously refreshing biography of someone who should be far more well-known.
Fabulously researched, supremely well written, and a treasure trove of a delight to read.
Brilliant.
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