Peter Lunn

Peter Northcote Lunn (15 November 1914 – 30 November 2011) was a British alpine skier who competed in the 1936 Winter Olympics. As a spymaster in the early Cold War, he was noted for his resourceful use of telephone tapping.

Biography The son of Arnold Lunn and Mabel Stafford Northcote (1889-1959), granddaughter of the 1st Earl of Iddesleigh. He was born in Coventry and educated at Eton.

Shortly before his second birthday in 1916, Lunn's father introduced him to skiing at Mürren, which was the Lunn family's winter home. "I remember endlessly walking up the practice slope, skiing over a large bump and falling over," Lunn said at the age of 95. "My mother picked me up and said, 'Lean forward' – rather good advice." During the 1930s, Lunn was one of Britain's leading skiers. He was a member of the British international ski team from 1931 to 1937, and its captain from 1934 to 1937. At the 1936 Winter Olympics at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, he led the British ski team and finished twelfth in the alpine skiing combined event, the highest British placing. "I was overawed by the event and skied too carefully," he said later. "It was the only major international downhill race in which I failed to fall."

As well as two skiing manuals and The Guinness Book of Skiing, Lunn also wrote Evil in High Places, a thriller with a skiing background.

On 24 April 1939, Lunn married the Hon. Eileen Antoinette Mary Preston (1912–1976), the daughter of Jenico Edward Joseph Preston, 15th Viscount Gormanston (1879–1925). They had three sons and three daughters.

In 1954 Lunn was SIS head of station in Berlin, and cooperated with his CIA opposite number William King Harvey to bring about work on the Berlin Tunnel (known as Operation Gold by the Americans and Operation Stopwatch by the British). The operation was codenamed PBJOINTLY, with the P and B standing for Peter and Bill respectively. Most of the manpower and funds were provided by the Americans, while the technical skills and experience from the Vienna tunnel came from Lunn's officers. Unknown to either the SIS or the CIA, the tunnel was revealed to the Soviets from the beginning by George Blake, who worked for SIS on the project.

Lunn retired from government service in 1986.

Speed Skiing (1935) Evil in High Places (1947) A Ski-ing Primer (1948) The Guinness Book of Skiing (1983)