Throughout the early 1940s, until the end of war, Delmer and his team of German speaking actors, writers, comics and journalists broadcast a daily German radio programme from a leafy estate in Bedfordshire, close to Woburn Abbey. As director of Special Operations with the Political Warfare Executive, Delmer’s job was to produce and disseminate both pro-Allied and anti-Axis propaganda to damage enemy morale. Posing as a rogue German broadcaster, the radio show Der Chef reached Nazi forces throughout Germany and Occupied Europe, who tuned enthusiastically into its lewd comedy skits, satirical sketches, songs, gossip and false rumours about the Berlin-based Nazi elite.

In 1942, when America entered the war, Sefton Delmer launched a newspaper containing similar propaganda and fake news to entertain the Nazis.. And the man who put it all together, designing the paper’s layout, its headlines, the size, placement and prominence of its columns, and typography was none other than Harold Keeble – the “Wizard” of my book.

By the end of war, many millions of copies of Nachrichten fuer die Truppe had been printed and dropped over Occupied Europe, earning an OBE for both Sefton Delmer and Harold Keeble – who, as I later discovered never personally told me about his wartime role because he had signed the Official Secrets Act.