Jasper Maskelyne

Jasper Maskelyne (29 September 1902 – 15 March 1973) was a British stage magician in the 1930s and 1940s. He was one of an established family of stage magicians, the son of Nevil Maskelyne and a grandson of John Nevil Maskelyne. He is most remembered for his accounts of his work for the British military during the Second World War, in which he claimed to have created large-scale ruses, deception, and camouflage in an effort to defeat the Nazis.

Early life Maskelyne was born in Wandsworth, London, England in 1902, to magician Nevil Maskelyne and his wife Ada Mary Ardley.

Career Stage magician

Maskelyne was a successful stage magician. His 1936 Maskelyne's Book of Magic describes a range of stage tricks, including sleight of hand, card and rope tricks, and illusions of "mind-reading".

In 1937, Maskelyne appeared in a Pathé film, The Famous Illusionist, in which he performed his well-known trick of appearing to swallow razor blades.

Wartime service

Maskelyne entertains Indian Army officers and civilian VIPs at Mena House in Cairo, 19 April 1942.

When the Second World War broke out, Maskelyne, believing his skills could be used for camouflage, joined the Royal Engineers. According to one account, he convinced sceptical officers, including inspector of training Viscount Gort, of his bona fides by camouflaging a machine gun position in plain sight and creating the illusion of the German warship Graf Spee on the Thames using mirrors and a model.

In 1940, Maskelyne was trained at the Camouflage Development and Training Centre at Farnham Castle. He found the training boring, asserting in his book that "a lifetime of hiding things on the stage" had taught him more about camouflage "than rabbits and tigers will ever know". The camoufleur Julian Trevelyan commented that he "entertained us with his tricks in the evenings" at Farnham, but that Maskelyne was "rather unsuccessful" at actually camouflaging "concrete pill-boxes".

Brigadier Dudley Clarke, the head of the 'A' Force deception department, recruited Maskelyne to work for MI9 in Cairo. He created small devices intended to assist soldiers to escape if captured and lectured on escape techniques. These included tools hidden in cricket bats, saw blades inside combs, and small maps on objects such as playing cards.

... either absolutely central (if you believe his account and that of his biographer) or very marginal (if you believe the official records and more recent research).

His nature was "to perpetuate the myth of his own inventive genius, and perhaps he even believed it himself".

... dummy men, dummy steel helmets, dummy guns by the ten thousand, dummy tanks, dummy shell flashes by the million, dummy aircraft...

Christian House, reviewing Rick Stroud's book The Phantom Army of Alamein in The Independent, describes Maskelyne as "one of the more grandiose members" of the Second World War desert camouflage unit and "a chancer tasked with experimental developments, who fogged his own reputation as much as any desert convoy".

David Hambling, writing in Wired, critiques David Fisher's uncritical acceptance of Maskelyne's stories: "A very colourful account of Maskelyne's role is given in the book The War Magician—reading it you might think he won the war single-handed". Hambling denies Maskelyne's supposed concealment of the Suez Canal: "n spite of the book's claims, the dazzle light were never actually built (although a prototype was once tested)".

Later life and death After the war, Maskelyne resumed his magic career. In 1950 he moved to Africa, where he developed his show into a touring performance that travelled between South Africa and British possessions in East Africa. He eventually settled in Nairobi, where he founded a successful driving school. During the Mau Mau Uprising, Maskelyne led a mobile squad of police. In addition, he managed the Kenya National Theatre.

Family On 24 June 1926, Maskelyne married Evelyn Enid Mary Home-Douglas (died 24 March 1947), who had worked as a magician's assistant in his stage show. They were the parents of two children, son Alistair (1927–2019) and daughter Jasmine (born 1928), who was known as "Bobbie". On 11 March 1948 Maskelyne married Evelyne Mary Scotcher, who was known as Mary.

Possible film adaptations In 2003, director Peter Weir and actor Tom Cruise were working on a film based on The War Magician. When questions rose about how much of the story was factual and how much was invented by the author, the project was dropped while still in pre-production. At the time, the project was pending the selection of a director.

Works