Paul Dukes

Sir Paul Henry Dukes (1889-1967) was a British author and WWI MI6 officer. Born in Bridgwater, Somerset, England, the son of a clergyman, he was educated at Caterham School in England, and Petrograd Conservative in Russia.

As a young man he took a position as a language teacher in Riga, Latvia. He later moved to St. Petersburg, where he was a secret agent in pre-revolutionary Russia. He set up elaborate plans to help prominent White Russians escape from Communist prisons and helped hundreds of them slip into Finland.

Dukes continued his use of disguises, which aided him in assuming a number of identities and gained him access to numerous Russian organizations. He joined, among others, the Communist Party, the Comintern, and the Russian secret police, the Cheka. He learned of the inner working of the top Russian leaders, and passed along their plans to British intelligence authorities.

He returned to Britain a distinguished hero, and in 1920 was knighted by King George VI, who called Dukes the "greatest of all soldiers". Dukes is the only person knighted based entirely on his exploits as a spy. He briefly returned to service in 1939, helping to locate a prominent Czech business who disappeared after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.

He died on August 27, 1967 in Cape Town, South Africa.