Harry Chapman Pincher (born 29 March 1914) is an Indian born British journalist and novelist whose writing mainly focuses on espionage and related matters, after some early books on scientific subjects.[1]
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His family was from north Yorkshire and his father was serving in the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers in India when Chapman was born.[1] His father owned a sweetshop in Darlington and later a pub on the River Tees.[1]
He was educated at Darlington Grammar School and King's College London before joining the Daily Express in 1946 as a science and defence correspondent.
Pincher is best known as the author of the 1981 book Their Trade is Treachery, in which he publicized for the first time the suspicions that former Director General of MI5 Roger Hollis had been a spy for the Soviet Union, and describes MI5's and MI6's internal inquiries into the matter.
He was at one point close to Peter Wright, who he knew suspected Harold Wilson of having been a Soviet agent, and according to the biography of Wilson written by Ben Pimlott, Pincher was trying to get information from Wright so that he could accuse Wilson in public.
Pincher was convinced that, alongside Wilson, many other members of the Labour party were Soviet agents, among them MP Tom Driberg, who was Chairman of the Labour Party. Pincher claimed that Driberg was an active double agent for MI5 and the KGB despite his well-founded reputation for total indiscretion. [2]