Before he became a BAFTA- and Oscar-winning screenwriter of Goldfinger (1964), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Paul Dehn spent the brutal middle years of World War II as a senior intelligence man. Stationed at Camp X in Ontario — one of the Special Operations Executive’s secret training stations — Dehn served as Political Warfare Officer from 1942 to 1944 with the rank of Major and took part in operations in occupied France and in Norway. Contemporary and later admirers of his screenplays noted how unnervingly authentic his spycraft felt; that authenticity had a real-world provenance: Dehn was, for a time, partnered with Kim Philby, the MI6 officer who decades later would be unmasked as a Soviet double agent.
Preparing the daily feature…
AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1940s
From Camp X to the Cutting Room: Paul Dehn’s Secret Life Next to Kim Philby and the Whispered Kill Missions
Paul Dehn / 1940s
Before he became a BAFTA- and Oscar-winning screenwriter of Goldfinger (1964), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Paul Dehn spent the brutal middle years of World War II as a senior intelligence man. Stationed at Camp X in Ontario — one of the Special Operations Executive’s secret training stations — Dehn served as Political Warfare Officer from 1942 to 1944 with the rank of Major and took part in operations in occupied France and in Norway. Contemporary and later admirers of his screenplays noted how unnervingly authentic his spycraft felt; that authenticity had a real-world provenance: Dehn was, for a time, partnered with Kim Philby, the MI6 officer who decades later would be unmasked as a Soviet double agent.
The daily feature is taking an intermission. There’s still an entire archive to explore.