Anthony Cave Brown

Anthony Cave Brown (born Bath, Somerset, England, March 21, 1929, died Warrenton, Virginia, USA, July 14, 2006) was an English-American journalist, espionage non-fiction writer, and historian.

Early years

Anthony Cave Brown was born in Bath, and moved to London as a boy, stuffing propaganda leaflets into bombs meant for Germany towards the end of World War II. He graduated from Luton Grammar School, and joined the Royal Air Force for his national service, working as a photographer.

Journalist

He began his reporting career in Luton and Bristol, and moved to London and Fleet Street in the mid-1950s, joining the "Daily Mail". He covered the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, and won the 'Reporter of the Year' award in 1958. He covered the Algerian war of independence in the late 1950s. He secured the first Western interview with Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser, and was a frequent drinking companion of Kim Philby in the Middle East before Philby's defection to the Soviet Union in 1963. He also interviewed the dissident Soviet writer Boris Pasternak, then under surveillance, in 1959, smuggling out two poems by Pasternak, one of which was immediately published in the "Daily Mail".

Brown earned a reputation as an adventurous cutting-edge reporter, but developed something of an extravagant lifestyle, and often left behind large unpaid bills on his foreign trips, according to colleagues. He rode on the first nuclear-powered submarine, and traveled to the South Pole with Sir Vivian Fuchs.

He returned to Britain in 1960 as chief reporter for the "Daily Mail", working to uncover corruption in Scotland Yard, and a major espionage case at the Portland naval base.

In 1962, he abandoned his wife Caroline Gilliat (daughter of the British filmmaker Sidney Gilliat) and their two small children, Amanda and Toby, with the marriage ending in divorce.

He then moved to the United States in 1962, spending a year at Stanford University's Hoover Institute as a visiting fellow. He covered the Vietnam War in the 1960s, and worked in Australia for a television station belonging to Rupert Murdoch. He also worked in Singapore and Malaysia.

Author, historian

He settled in Washington, D.C. in 1969, and later moved to northern Virginia. He began a 37-year relationship with Joan Simpson Halphen, a woman whom he had met in Paris, and utilized her considerable wealth to begin a second career as a major book author and historian, specializing in espionage, World War II, and Cold War themes.

Anthony Cave Brown's first major work to attract widespread attention was his 1975 book "Bodyguard of Lies", which examined the strategical elements of World War II, including codebreaking and its effect on the war's outcome. He followed up on this theme with a book, "The Last Hero: Wild Bill Donovan", about William J. Donovan, the director of the American Office of Strategic Services during World War II; the OSS later evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency. Another espionage-related effort was a 1987 biography of Sir Stewart Menzies, who served as head of British MI6 (SIS) during World War II. The book was titled "C: The Secret Life of Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, Spymaster to Winston Churchill". His book "Treason in the Blood: H. St. John Philby, Kim Philby, and the Spy Case of the Century", published in 1994, examined the interconnected lives of the famous British spies Kim Philby and Harry St. John Philby, son and father. His final 1999 book "Oil, God, and Gold: The Story of Aramco and the Saudi Kings", examined the Aramco company in Saudi Arabia.

He died of dementia and pneumonia-related causes in 2006 at age 77. Joan Simpson Halphen predeceased him by four months. His wife and two children survive him.

Major Works

* "Bodyguard of Lies", by Anthony Cave Brown, New York, Harper and Row, 1975, ISBN 1585746924.

* "On a Field of Red: the Communist International and the Coming of World War II" by Anthony Cave Brown, 1981, ISBN 0399125426.

* "The Last Hero: Wild Bill Donovan", by Anthony Cave Brown, New York, Times Books, 1982, ISBN 0686959752.

* "Secret War Report of the OSS", by Anthony Cave Brown, ISBN 0425032531.

* "The Secret History of the Atomic Bomb", by Anthony Cave Brown and Charles B. MacDonald, ISBN 0440577284.

* "Operation World War III", by Anthony Cave Brown.

* "C: The Secret Life of Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, Spymaster to Winston Churchill", by Anthony Cave Brown, New York, MacMillan Publishing, 1987, ISBN 0025173901.

* "Treason in the Blood: H. St. John Philby, Kim Philby, and the Spy Case of the Century", by Anthony Cave Brown, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1994, ISBN 039563119X.

* "Oil, God, and Gold: The Story of Aramco and the Saudi Kings", by Anthony Cave Brown, 1999, ISBN 0395592208.

References

* http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701719.html. "The Washington Post", obituary by Matt Schubel.
* http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/arts/02brown.html."The New York Times", obituary by Douglas Martin.
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/oct/17/pressandpublishing.booksobituaries."The Guardian", obituary by Dan van der Vat.
* http://www.timesonline.co.uk./tol/comment/obituaries/article694953.ece."The Times" obituary.

External links