Emma Letley discusses the life and work of Marion Milner PAGE 12
Flashback
Chapman Pincher BSc FKC – spycatcher Harry Chapman Pincher was born on 29 March 1914 in a field tent in Ambala, India, where his father was stationed as an officer in the Northumberland Fusiliers. He had a peripatetic childhood, attending 13 different schools before the family settled in Croft, near Darlington, where his father ran a country pub. ‘It was a lovely place, with fishing, shooting, beagles – real country life,’ Pincher says. ‘It taught me very early on to be at ease with anybody of any rank. I wasn’t put out by meeting Lord Southampton or something like that because they’d come into the pub and have a game of darts.’ Pincher attended Darlington Grammar School, where his biology master, a King’s alumnus, inspired him to be an academic and to follow in his footsteps. He duly came to King’s to study botany and zoology in 1932, at the height of the Depression. ‘Unemployment was enormous. When I walked down Southampton Row from King’s to my digs in Bloomsbury there were Welsh miners in the gutter, 30 or 40 of them, all singing for pennies,’ he recalls. He studied under the controversial geneticist Professor Reginald Ruggles Gates. Gates was so impressed with two of Pincher’s papers that he got them published (as ‘Genetical Interpretation of Alternation of Generations’ and ‘A Genetical Interpretation of the Origin of Heterospory and Related Conditions’) – a rare achievement for an undergraduate. Pincher was indeed meant to join King’s academic staff as a demonstrator: what he describes as ‘the lowest thing that crawls in the science world, essentially a junior lecturer.’ But due to the straitened
military action. Professor Anatol Lieven wrote an op-ed for the New York Times ‘Attack Syria, Talk to Iran’ which appeared in Estadao de Sao Paulo and was reported in Iranian media. Dr Stacey Gutkowski (right), Middle East & Mediterranean Studies, was interviewed on BBC World News about the issues surrounding UK intervention. Professor Vernon Bogdanor, Institute of Contemporary British History, was interviewed by BBC Radio 5 Live about events in the UK Parliament and Dr Andrew Blick told AFP that people wanted to avoid a re-run of Iraq.
PHIL SAYER
King’s is the alma mater of the distinguished journalist, historian and novelist Chapman Pincher, who at the age of 99 continues to make controversial allegations about the British security services
economic times, the necessary grant never materialised, and instead he became a teacher at the Liverpool Institute, later famous for educating Paul McCartney and George Harrison. In 1940 he joined the Royal Armoured Corps where he trained as a tank gunner and was promoted to corporal, before receiving a commission and transferring
to the Rocket Division of the Ministry of Supply, where he worked as a technician. After being demobilised in 1946 he became Defence, Science and Medical Correspondent at the Daily Express, then in its heyday. The editor, Arthur Christiansen, opted for the pen name Chapman, because plain Harry ‘wasn’t pompous enough’. Pincher
had a remarkable career at the Daily Express, becoming one of Fleet Street’s most recognisable names and publishing frequent front-page scoops, largely due to his ability to be taken into the confidence of senior government members and officials, often over lunch at his favourite restaurant, L’Ecu de France in Jermyn Street. (He joked at the
Dr Sam Greene, Russia Institute, said on BBC News and Radio Five Live that Russia had urged Assad’s government to give access to UN weapons inspectors, and was interviewed on Sky News following the G20. Dr Joanna Kidd, King’s Policy Institute, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about the history of chemical weapons in war and was interviewed by Globo TV (Brazil).
focusing on military use of robots encourages people to envisage a ‘terminator-type robot’. She added: ‘This is not a future that any of us working in the field envisage.’
from selection of IVF procedures, to multiple embryos, and to preterm birth.’ The findings were reported by The Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, ITV News, Press Association, Bloomberg and Xinhua (China), among others.
‘Killer robots’
Professor Maria Fox, Informatics, played down the threat of so-called ‘killer robots’ in an interview on BBC Newsnight and said that
IVF – autism link
IVF treatments for male infertility are associated with an increased risk of autism and intellectual disability, according to research by the IoP. Dr Avi Reichenberg said: ‘There are a number of risk factors,
Miranda detention
Professor Robert Wintemute, Law, commented on the controversial detention of David Miranda in the New York
time that he should have changed his name again to Chapman Luncher). In 1972 he was appointed Assistant Editor of the Daily Express and Chief Defence Correspondent of the Beaverbrook newspapers. Over the course of a very long publishing career, spanning almost seven decades, Pincher has published nearly 40 books, starting with The Breeding of Farm Animals, (Penguin, 1940) and including non-fiction, novels and children’s books. But he is best known for his work on spies and the security services, notably the bestselling Their Trade is Treachery, published in 1981, soon after he had left the Daily Express. Based on interviews with Peter Wright, a retired MI5 Soviet counterespionage officer, it accused the former Director-General of MI5 Sir Roger Hollis of being a spy – a theme Pincher has developed over the rest of his career, culminating in Treachery: Betrayals, Blunders and Cover-Ups: Six Decades of Espionage, published in 2012. Now, at the age of 99, Pincher has just completed his autobiography, which he describes as ‘quite long’ because he has ‘met so many people.’ A keen fisherman, Pincher also lays claim to landing the biggest trout caught in a British river – a rainbow trout, ‘a colossal fish’, weighing 20lb 6oz – when he was 90, a record that he believes is unlikely to be broken. Looking back over his career, he says: ‘My only regret was that I was never on the staff at King’s, but then my life wouldn’t have been so interesting. I met everyone, went everywhere and travelled like a prince.’ Pincher was elected a Fellow of King’s in 1978. He has donated his papers to the College, where they form part of the holdings of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives.
Times. Miranda is alleged to have been carrying top-secret British documents. Professor Wintemute said: ‘I hope this is an aberration rather than a signal of a wider clampdown on press freedom and human rights.’ Helping the police
MSc Forensic Science student Poulomi Bhadra is helping the Met Police to identify time of death by studying the behaviour of flies as they feed on the bodies of murder victims. Her project was reported by BBC Breakfast, ITV (Online), Independent and The Times, and in India by the Hindustan Times, Deccan Herald and Tribune. November 2013 | Issue 204 | 11