Anthony Cave Brown

Anthony Cave Brown (March 21, 1929, Bath, Somerset, England – July 14, 2006, Warrenton, Virginia, USA) 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 was educated at Luton Grammar School, and joined the Royal Air Force for his national service, working as a photographer.

Journalist

Brown began his reporting career in Luton and Bristol before moving to Fleet Street in the mid-1950s where he joined the Daily Mail. During the late 1950's he covered the Hungarian Revolution (in 1956) and the Algerian War of Independence. In 1958 he was awarded 'Reporter of the Year'. Brown secured the first Western interview with Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser, and was a frequent drinking companion of Kim Philby in the Middle East prior to the latters 1963 defection to the Soviet Union. He also interviewed the dissident Soviet writer Boris Pasternak, who at the time was under surveillance, in 1959. He subsequently smuggled two of Pasternak's poems back to the UK, 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. The marriage ended in divorce. The daughter, now Amanda Eliasch, ex-wife of Johan Eliasch, is a photographer and has recently published a book on poetry and photography entitled Cloak and Dagger Butterfly, and British artists at work, with Italian Vogue's Franca Sozzani. The son, Toby, is a chairman of a leading hockey club in Wiltshire.

Brown 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 and 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 Bodyguard of Lies (1975), 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 Office of Strategic Services 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 (Secret Intelligence Service) 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 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: Secret American Plan (Dropshot) for War with the Soviet Union in 1957, 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.

interview Treason in the Blood The Times obituary.

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