Lady Spy, Gentleman Explorer: The Life of Herbert Dyce Murphy, the Most Extraordinary Australian You’ve Never Heard of by Heather Rossiter

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Pages are sunned.

Unforgettable story of Herbert Dyce Murphy (1879-1971), who was born in 1879 to a wealthy Melbourne family. Rejecting his father's staid plans for him, he instead signed on as a teenage apprentice aboard a wool clipper, then went whaling in the Arctic.

This was followed by a stint at Oxford University, where he so convincingly played a woman on stage that British Intelligence recruited him to spy in drag on the Continent (pre-World War I). On one outing in London, while dressed as a woman, he ran into his own mother, an incident that inspired Patrick White's The Twyborn Affair. (back cover)