Paul Dukes

Sir Paul Henry Dukes (10 February 1889 – 27 August 1967) was a British MI6 officer and author.

Known as the "Man of a Hundred Faces," Dukes continued his use of disguises, which aided him in assuming a number of identities and gained him access to numerous Bolshevik organizations. He successfully infiltrated the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Comintern, and even the political police, or CHEKA. Dukes also learned of the inner workings of the Politburo, and passed the information to British intelligence.

He returned to Britain a distinguished hero, and in 1920 was knighted by King George V, who called Dukes the "greatest of all soldiers." To this day, Dukes is the only person knighted based entirely on his exploits in espionage.

He briefly returned to active service in 1939, helping to locate a prominent Czech businessman who had disappeared after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. He referred to the businessman as Alfred Obry in his later book about the search, entitled An Epic of the Gestapo. According to A History of the British Secret Service (1969), "Paul Dukes was always a meticulous agent in paying attention to detail. He combed all the Czech papers and in one found this paragraph: 'A thirteen-year-old boy found on the railway line to Tuschkau the completely unrecognizable corpse of a man. The body was mutilated beyond recognition and the right hand was missing. The police pronounced a verdict of suicide. From papers found on the body it appeared the person was Friedrich Sweiger, a tailor of Prague.' Dukes immediately suspected Sweiger was in fact Obry, especially since this was the route Obry was to have taken on his escape. He built up a strong case against the Gestapo of murdering Obry and not only demanded exhumation of the body but succeeded in persuading the Germans to do this. The corpse was undoubtedly that of Obry."

Dukes was also a leading figure in introducing yoga to the Western World.

Writing His book Red Dusk and the Morrow chronicles the rise and fall of Bolshevism and he toured the world extensively giving lectures pertaining to this subject. Dukes' other books are listed below.

Personal life In 1922, Margaret was the daughter of Anne Harriman, the second wife of William Kissam Vanderbilt, and her second husband, Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, Jr., son of the astronomer Lewis Morris Rutherfurd. They divorced in 1929, and Dukes later married Diana Fitzgerald in 1959.

Works (1921). "What Russia Thinks of the Bolsheviki," The World's Work, Vol. XLII, pp. 100–104. (1921). "Sovietism's Effect on Russia's Young," The New York Times, 17 July, p. 27. (1921). "The Secret Door," The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. CXXVIII, pp. 1–13. (1922). Red Dusk and the Morrow: Adventures and Investigations in Red Russia. London: Williams and Norgate. (1938). The Story of "ST 25": Adventure and Romance in the Secret Intelligence Service in Red Russia. London: Cassell and Co. (1940). An Epic of the Gestapo: The Story of a Strange Search, London: Cassell and Co. (1947). Come Hammer, Come Sickle! London: Cassell and Co. (1950). The Unending Quest: Autobiographical Sketches. London: Cassell and Co. (1958). Yoga for the Western World, Students of Western Yoga. (1960). The Yoga of Health, Youth and Joy: A Treatise on Hatha Yoga Adapted to the West. London: Cassell and Co.