Peter Fleming: 1907-1971

Peter Fleming was a British explorer and travel writer. The older brother of Ian Fleming, Peter was educated at Eton College and then at Christ Church, Oxford. Special correspondent for The Times for many years, Peter also wrote for The Spectator under the name ‘Strix’. He wrote several travel books in the 1930s, very much within the genre of the time. First was Brazilian Adventure (1933), an account of his trip into the Brazilian jungle in search of the lost Colonel Percy Fawcett. This was followed by One's Company (1934; reissued 2004), describing his expedition to China in 1933, and News from Tartary (1936; reissued 2001), an account of his remarkable journey from Peking to Kashmir with Ella Maillart. He spent a large part of World War II in Peking, and was responsible for military deception operations in Southeast Asia. He received an OBE in 1945 for his services.

He kept writing during the war, producing a humorous novel, The Flying Visit (1941), and a collection of short stories, A Story to Tell (1942). His later books include: The Sixth Column (1952); A Forgotten Journey (1952), a diary of his journey from Moscow to Peking and beyond in 1934-5; a number of essay collections written as ‘Strix’ for The Spectator; Invasion 1940 (1957), an account of the planned Nazi invasion of Britain which was published in America as Operation Sea Lion (1959); The Siege at Peking (1959; reissued 2001); Bayonets to Lhasa (1961), an account of the British invasion of Tibet in 1904; and The Fate of Admiral Kolchak (1963; reissued 2001), a study of the White Army leader Admiral Kolchak who attempted to save the Imperial Russian family at Ekaterinburg in 1918. Peter was married to the actress Dame Celia Johnson for over thirty years, and they lived in Oxfordshire where he wrote and ran the family estate.

Recent books:

One's Company: A Journey to China (Pimlico: 2004)
News from Tartary (Birlinn: 2001)
The Siege at Peking (Birlinn: 2001)
The Fate of Admiral Kolchak (Birlinn: 2001)