W. Stanley Moss

Ivan William Stanley Moss MC (1921 - 1965), known as Bill or Billy, served with the Coldstream Guards and SOE and was a best-selling author in the 1950s. He also travelled around the world.

Born in Japan, his mother was a White Russian emigre, and his father an English businessman. He went to school at Charterhouse (1934-39), and during World War II was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards before joining the Special Operations Executive based in Cairo. He became a Major aged 22 and was posted to Crete to assist the resistance there. He is best remembered for his involvement with the capture of General Heinrich Kreipe, the events of which later became the basis for his best-selling book "Ill Met by Moonlight". An adaptation of the book was made into a film, starring Dirk Bogarde as Patrick Leigh Fermor, and David Oxley as Moss. Towards the end of the War he served in the Far East.

He married the Polish refugee Countess Zofia Roza Jadwiga Elzbieta Tarnowska, the granddaughter of Stanislaw Tarnowski (1837-1917), in Cairo before the end of the war, and they moved to London, and then to Ireland. He continued to achieve success as an author, and they had three children, Christine Isabelle, Gabriella Zofia, and Sebastian, known as Billy Boy, who died in infancy. They later moved to Putney, London, and separated in 1957.

He travelled extensively, notably to Antarctica with a British Antarctic Expedition. Eventually he settled in Kingston, Jamaica, and died aged 44.

Literature

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* "My father joins the fire brigade" Bruno Schulz, transl. by W. Stanley Moss and Zofia Tarnowska

External links

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