Talk:Alan Nunn May

This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Politics of the United Kingdom on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Politics of the United KingdomWikipedia:WikiProject Politics of the United KingdomTemplate:WikiProject Politics of the United KingdomPolitics of the United Kingdom articles

??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

More information:
/
	This article has been automatically rated by a bot or other tool because one or more other projects use this class. Please ensure the assessment is correct before removing the `\|auto=` parameter.

Biography: Science and Academia

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by the science and academia work group.

Physics: Biographies Low‑importance

	Physics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhysicsWikipedia:WikiProject PhysicsTemplate:WikiProject Physicsphysics articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Biographies Taskforce.

Military history: World War II

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles

This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
Referencing and citation: criterion not met Coverage and accuracy: criterion met Structure: criterion met Grammar and style: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion met

Associated task forces:
/
	World War II task force

Socialism

	Socialism portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Socialism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of socialism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SocialismWikipedia:WikiProject SocialismTemplate:WikiProject Socialismsocialism articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Merge[edit]

Obviously Allan Nunn May is the same person. Which way should the merge go? This spelling ("Alan") does seem more common online (by about a factor of about three) but I'm inclined to suspect it is wrong, and just got used ignorantly because it is a more common spelling of the name. (The other seems an unlikely thing to have been introduced if it wasn't correct.) I found the spelling "Allan Nunn May" in Dawidoff, Nicholas (1994). The Catcher was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg. New York: Vintage Books. p. 242. ISBN 0679762892. That book is generally well proofread. Also, Alan Moorehead apparently wrote a book titled The Traitors: Klaus Fuchs, Allan Nunn May, Bruno Pontecorvo. It seems he'd be unlikely to misspell in a title. But I see some sources I'd usually consider high-quality using "Alan" (e.g. an obituary in The Independent). In any case the articles should be merged and both spellings should be mentioned; the question is whether one is correct and should be favored for the article location. - Jmabel | Talk 08:29, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the articles should be merged. I have no idea what the correct spelling of the first name is, but I myself would spell it Allan (if nothing else, to me that's the more common spelling!) Just a technical question: what happens to the revision history in case of a merge? Turgidson 13:26, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, the best way to handle that is:

Copy the text of the article being merged from verbatim below the text of the article being merged to. The edit summary on this should include the link to what is merged from.
Turn the article being merged from into a redirect.
Edit the article being merged to to integrate the material.

Then the history of the merged article will contain a link back to the other article, whose history can easily be checked in its own right. - Jmabel | Talk 19:07, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I incline to "Alan" as I got his biography from the Oxford DNB/Dictionary of National Biography (online version) with Alan. And looking in the official English Microfiche Index (put out by ONS I think) as May Alan N. - Volume 6c page 375, in 2nd Quarter 1911. So 2 votes for "Alan" ?? Hugo999 (talk) 13:15, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now merged (under "Alan") , all discussion is under Alan anyway Hugo999 (talk) 14:24, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Death statement?[edit]

Can we get a source for this:

"He died of pneumonia and pulmonary disease. A 2002 statement released after his death stated that he had no regrets about his spying activities."

Does this mean a statement written in 2002 and released in 2003 says this? 0x0077BE (talk) 07:19, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Slightly fictionalized recount of his case[edit]

In the March 9, 1952 episode of the radio program "WHitehall 1212", titled, "The Case of Dr. Duncan Allen" is based on Alan Nunn May, including his being paid with bottles of whiskey (in the program, he added ginger ale to the whiskey), other basics of the investigation, and his receiving 10 years in prison. At the time of this broadcast, he would have still be serving his sentence. Jtyroler (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 08:17, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Alan Nunn May. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20041216164129/http://www.cns-snc.ca/history/pioneers/a_nunnmay/a_nunnmay.html to http://www.cns-snc.ca/history/pioneers/a_nunnmay/a_nunnmay.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 08:14, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]