Ben Macintyre (born 1963) is a British author, historian, and columnist writing for The Times newspaper. His columns range from current affairs to historical controversies.

Author[link]

Macintyre is the author of a book on the gentleman criminal Adam Worth, The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief.^[1] He also wrote The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan,^[2] and a book on the real-life double agent of Germany and England during the Second World War, Eddie Chapman, titled Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: Lover, Betrayer, Hero, Spy.^[3]

Two of his books have recently been made into documentaries for the BBC: Operation Mincemeat (2010) and DOUBLE AGENT: The Eddie Chapman Story (2011).

Bibliography[link]

• Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992. ISBN 978-0-374-15759-3.^[4]
• The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. ISBN 978-0-374-21899-7.^[1]
• A Foreign Field. HarperCollins, 2001. ISBN 978-0-00-257122-7.^[5] this book was published in USA as: * The Englishman's Daughter: A True Story of Love and Betrayal in World War One. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. ISBN 978-0-374-12985-9.^[6]
• The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. ISBN 978-0-374-20178-4.^[2]
• Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: Lover, Betrayer, Hero, Spy. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-0-7475-8794-1.^[3]
• The Last Word: Tales from the Tip of the Mother Tongue. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009. ISBN 978-1-4088-0333-2.^[7]
• Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7475-9868-8.^[8]
• Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012. ISBN 978-1-4088-1990-6.^[9]

References[link]

External links[link]

• "Ben Macintyre, columnist", is Macintyre's op-ed page at The Times.

Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception plan during World War II. As part of the widespread deception plan Operation Barclay to cover the intended invasion of Italy from North Africa, Mincemeat helped to convince the German high command that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia in 1943 instead of Sicily, the actual objective. This was accomplished by persuading the Germans that they had, by accident, intercepted "top secret" documents giving details of Allied war plans. The documents were attached to a corpse deliberately left to wash up on a beach in Punta Umbría in Spain. The story was used as the plot in Duff Cooper's 1950 novel Operation Heartbreak, but revealed as a true story in the 1953 book The Man Who Never Was.

Background[link]

In late 1942, Operation Torch to invade French North Africa was imminent, and victory in the North African Campaign was expected. Allied planners considered the next step in the war and decided to continue attacks in the Mediterranean.

From North Africa, attacks could be made either into Italy or through the Balkans trapping the German forces there between the Western Allies and the Soviets. Control of Sicily would open the Mediterranean to Allied shipping and allow invasion of continental Europe, making Sicily an obvious strategic objective. German planners saw this as well; Winston Churchill commented "Everyone but a bloody fool would know that it's Sicily."

The massive Allied buildup of resources for the invasion (code-named Operation Husky) would be detected. The Germans would know that some large attack was coming. However, if the Allies could deceive the Germans about where that attack was going, the Germans might disperse or divert some significant part of their forces, which would help the invasion succeed. This had already been practised by the British in the fighting in North Africa and the British had established a competent system for deception of the enemy, able to give the appearance of fake formations and to feed misinformation through double agents and diplomatic rumour.

Several months before, Flight Lt. Charles Cholmondeley RAF of Section B1(a) of MI5,^[1] suggested dropping a dead man attached to a badly-opened parachute in France with a radio set for the Germans to find. The idea was for the Germans to think that the Allies did not know the set was captured, and pretend to be Allied agents operating it, thus allowing the Allies to feed them misinformation. This was dismissed as unworkable; however the idea was taken up later by the Twenty Committee, the small inter-service, inter-departmental intelligence team in charge of double agents. Cholmondeley was on the Twenty Committee, as was Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu, a Royal Navy intelligence officer.

According to historian Ben Macintyre, Cholmondeley got the idea from a 1939 memo written by Ian Fleming, later author of the James Bond novels. Fleming himself reportedly got the idea from a 1930s detective novel by Basil Thomson.^[2]

Montagu and Cholmondeley developed Cholmondeley's idea into a workable plan, using documents instead of a radio. The Committee thought of planting the documents on a body with a defective parachute. However, the Germans knew that it was Allied policy never to send sensitive documents over enemy territory, so they decided to make the man a victim of a plane crash at sea. That would explain how the man would be several days dead and how he could be carrying secret documents. The body would be floated ashore in Spain, where the nominally neutral government was known to cooperate with the Abwehr (German intelligence). The British were sure the Spanish authorities would search the body and allow German agents to examine anything found. Montagu gave the operation the code name of Mincemeat, just restored to the list of available names after its use for another successful mission.^[3]

The deliberate planting of fake documents on the enemy was not new. Known as the "Haversack Ruse", it had been practiced by the British in the First World War. Also, in August 1942 in North Africa, before the Battle of Alam Halfa a corpse was placed in a blown-up scout car, in a minefield facing the German 90th Light Division just south of Qaret el Abd. With the corpse was a map showing the locations of non-existent British minefields. The Germans fell for the ruse, and Rommel's panzers were routed to areas of soft sand where they bogged down.^{[4][5][notes 1]}

In September 1942, a PBY Catalina crashed off Cadiz carrying Paymaster-Lt. James Hadden Turner, a courier. He was carrying a letter from General Mark Clark to the Governor of Gibraltar, which named French agents in North Africa and gave the date of the Torch landings as 4 November (although the actual date was 8 November). Turner's body washed up on the beach near Tarifa and was recovered by the Spanish authorities. When the body was returned to the British, the letter was still on it, and technicians determined that the letter was never opened. The Germans had the means to read the letter without opening the envelope, but if they did, they apparently decided the letter was "planted" and the information was bogus, and so ignored it.^[4]

Major William Martin, Royal Marines[link]

With the help of the renowned pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury, Montagu and his team determined what kind of body they needed: a man who appeared to have died at sea by hypothermia and drowning, and then floated ashore after several days. However, finding a usable body seemed almost impossible, as indiscreet inquiries would cause talk, and it was impossible to tell a dead man's next of kin what the body was wanted for. Under quiet pressure, Bentley Purchase, coroner of St. Pancras District in London, obtained the body of a 34-year old Welsh man named Glyndwr Michael, on the condition that the man's real identity would never be revealed. The man had died after ingesting rat poison which contained phosphorus. After being ingested, the phosphide reacts with hydrochloric acid in the human stomach, generating phosphine, a highly toxic gas. Coroner Purchase explained, “This dose was not sufficient to kill him outright, and its only effect was so to impair the functioning of the liver that he died a little time afterwards”, leaving few clues to the cause of death. Montagu later claimed the man died from pneumonia, and that the family had been contacted and permission obtained, but none of this was true. The dead man's parents had died and no known relatives were found.^[6]

The next step was creating a "legend": a synthetic identity for the dead man. He became "Captain (Acting Major) William "Bill" Martin, Royal Marines",^[6] born 1907, in Cardiff, Wales, and assigned to Headquarters, Combined Operations. As a Royal Marine, Major Martin came under Admiralty authority, and it would be easy to ensure that all official inquiries and messages about his death would be routed to the Naval Intelligence Division. The Army's arrangements were different and much harder to control. Also, he could wear battledress rather than a naval uniform (uniforms were tailor-made by Gieves & Hawkes of Savile Row, and they couldn't have Gieves's tailor measure a corpse.) The rank of acting Major made him senior enough to be entrusted with sensitive documents, but not so prominent that anyone would expect to know him. The name "Martin" was chosen because there were several Martins of about that rank in the Royal Marines.^[3]

To build up the legend, they provided a fiancée named "Pam". ^[7] Major Martin carried a snapshot of "Pam", who was actually a clerk in MI5 named Nancy Jean Leslie and later known as Jean Gerard Leigh (20 November 1923 – 3 April 2012),^[6] two love letters, and a jeweller's bill, dated 19 April 1943, from the exclusive S J Phillips Ltd of 113 New Bond Street, for a diamond engagement ring costing £53, 10s 6d, a ring that would cost £1,800 today.^[8] The ring was described on the invoice as being a single diamond ring, small diamond shoulders with an engraving to Pam from WM 14.4.43. The author of the love letters was reportedly Hester Leggett, the head of Leslie's department at MI5,^[6] and not Paddy Bennett, later Lady Ridsdale,^[9] the only woman working in Room 39 under the command of Admiral John Henry Godfrey. Ian Fleming also worked in Room 39; he later modeled the characters of Miss Moneypenny and M on Bennett and Admiral Godfrey, respectively.^[9] In keeping with his rank, he was given some good quality underwear, at the time extremely difficult to obtain due to rationing. Items of woollen underwear owned by the late Herbert Fisher, the Master of New College Oxford, having been run over and killed by a lorry, were secured and used to underpin the verisimilitude of the body.^[6]

He also had a pompous letter from his father, a letter from the family solicitor, and a letter from Ernest Whitley Jones, joint general manager of Lloyds Bank,^[6] demanding payment of an overdraft of £79 19s 2d (£79.96). There were a book of stamps, a silver cross and St Christopher’s medallion, a pencil stub, keys, a used twopenny bus ticket,^[6] ticket stubs from a London theatre, a bill for four nights' lodging at the Naval and Military Club, and a receipt from Gieves & Hawkes for a new shirt (this last was an error: it was for cash, and officers never paid cash at Gieves; but the Germans did not catch it). All these documents were on authentic stationery or billheads. The dates of the ticket stubs and lodging bill indicated that Major Martin had left London on 24 April. If his body washed ashore on 30 April, presumably after several days at sea, then he must have flown from Britain and crashed at sea.

To make the Major even more believable, Montagu and his team decided to suggest that he was a bit careless. His ID card was marked as a replacement for one that had been lost, and his pass to Combined Operations HQ had expired a few weeks before his departure and not been renewed. This last touch carried an element of risk, as the Abwehr might be suspicious of a careless man having been entrusted with sensitive documents.

The deceptive documents[link]

While the cover identity was created by Montagu and his team, the false documents were also being created. Montagu and his team insisted that these must be at the very highest level, so that there would be no question of the supposed senders being misinformed. The main document was a personal letter from "Archie Nye" (Lt. Gen. Sir Archibald Nye, Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff) to "My dear Alex" (General Sir Harold Alexander, commander of 18th Army Group in Algeria and Tunisia). The letter covered several "sensitive" subjects, such as the (unwanted) award of Purple Heart medals by U.S. forces to British servicemen serving with them, and the appointment of a new commander of the Guards Brigade. This explained its being hand-carried rather than sent through regular channels. On the specific topic of Allied plans in the Mediterranean, the letter referred to Operation Husky as the invasion of Greece by troops from Egypt and Libya under General Henry Maitland Wilson (Commander-in-Chief, Middle East). Two assault beaches and some of the assigned troops were named. (Husky was actually the invasion of Sicily.) The letter also mentioned a second planned attack, Operation Brimstone, for which the cover target was Sicily. This implied that Alexander's forces in Tunisia would invade Sardinia, that being the only other plausible target. Nye added that "we stand a very good chance of making [the Germans] think we are going for Sicily." The letter was composed by Sir Archibald himself and addressed by Patricia Trehearne (later Davies) in Room 13 of the Admiralty.^{[citation needed]}

There was also a letter of introduction for Major Martin from his putative commanding officer, Admiral Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations, to Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Fleet and Allied naval commander in the Mediterranean. This letter included a clumsy joke about "sardines", which Montagu inserted in hopes the Germans would see it as a reference to a planned invasion of Sardinia.^{[citation needed]}

As the Germans (and their Spanish friends) had apparently missed the letter in Paymaster-Lt. Turner's pocket, Montagu's team decided to put the documents in a briefcase that could not be overlooked. To justify carrying documents in a briefcase, "Major Martin" was given two copies of the official pamphlet on Combined Operations by Hilary Saunders, and a letter from Mountbatten to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Force and the senior allied commander in Europe and the Mediterranean, asking him to write a brief foreword for the pamphlet's U.S. edition.^{[citation needed]}

It was also necessary to ensure that the body and the briefcase with the documents would be recovered together. The team first thought of having the handle clutched in the corpse's hand, held in place by rigor mortis, but the rigor would probably wear off and the briefcase would drift away. The team therefore equipped Major Martin with a leather-covered chain, such as was used by bank and jewellery couriers to secure their cases against snatching. The chain unobtrusively runs down a sleeve to the case. British officer couriers didn't use such chains, but the Germans might not know that, nor be certain that a real "Major Martin" wouldn't use one for this special job. It seemed unlikely that the Major would keep the bag at his wrist during the long flight from Britain, so the chain was looped around the belt of his trench coat.^{[citation needed]}

Churchill briefed[link]

Colonel Johnnie Bevan, in overall command of wartime deception, was charged with explaining the operation to the Prime Minister. On 15 April 1943, he was ushered into Winston Churchill's bedroom in the annex, where he found Churchill in bed smoking a cigar. Churchill showed considerable interest in the plan, and Bevan felt it necessary to point out that the operation could go very badly. The Prime Minister responded in a characteristically pithy manner: "In that case, we shall have to get the body back and give it another swim".^[6]

Execution[link]

Major Martin, in his Royal Marines battledress and coat, was placed in a steel canister designed by Charles Fraser-Smith. The canister was filled with dry ice and sealed up. When the dry ice sublimated, it filled the canister with carbon dioxide and drove out any oxygen, thus preserving the body without refrigeration. Cholmondeley and Montagu delivered it to Holy Loch, Scotland where it was taken on board the British submarine HMS Seraph. Seraph's commander (Lt. Bill Jewell) and crew had previous special operations experience. Jewell told his men that the canister contained a top secret meteorological device to be deployed near Spain.^{[citation needed]}

On 19 April, Seraph set sail. On 30 April, Seraph arrived at a point about a mile off the coast of Spain, near the town of Huelva. The British knew that there was an Abwehr agent in Huelva who was friendly with the Spanish officials there.^{[citation needed]}

At 04:30 on 30 April, Seraph surfaced. Lt. Jewell had the canister brought up on deck, then sent all his crew below except the officers. He briefed them on the details of the secret operation. They opened the canister, fitted "Major Martin" with a life jacket, and attached his briefcase with the papers. Jewell read the 39th Psalm, although the burial service was not specified in the orders, and the body was gently pushed into the sea where the tide would bring it ashore. Half a mile to the south, a rubber dinghy was thrown overboard to provide additional 'evidence' of a crash. The canister was taken further out to sea and riddled with Vickers machine gun fire so that it would sink. Because of the air trapped in the insulation, this effort failed, and the canister was eventually rigged with plastic explosives to destroy it (this was not part of the plan, and Jewell did not mention it until the age of 77, in 1991). Jewell afterwards sent a message to the Committee: "MINCEMEAT completed", and continued on to Gibraltar and the Mediterranean. The body was found at around 9:30 a.m. by a local fisherman, José Antonio Rey Maria, and was taken to Huelva by the local military and law enforcement.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] "Mincemeat swallowed whole"

When the body was found, it was reported to the Abwehr agent in Huelva, Adolf Clauss. He was the son of the German consul, and operated under the cover of an agriculture technician.^[10] Three days later, the British Naval Attaché in Spain reported the body's discovery, and the Committee was notified. The body was handed over to the British Vice-Consul F. K. Hazeldene, and Major Martin was buried in the San Marco section of Nuestra Senora cemetery in Huelva^[11], with full military honours on 4 May.

The Vice Consul arranged for a pathologist, Eduardo Del Torno, to perform a post-mortem examination. Del Torno reported that the man had fallen into the sea while still alive and had no bruises, death was due to drowning, and the body had been in the sea between 3 and 5 days.^[10] A more comprehensive examination was not made because the pathologist took him for a Roman Catholic. Martin wore a silver crucifix and had a St. Christopher plaque^[6] in his wallet and his identity tags were marked RC.^[discuss]

Montagu had Major Martin included in the published list of British casualties which appeared in The Times on 4 June, in case the Germans checked up there. By coincidence, the names of two other officers who had died when their plane was lost at sea were also published that day, giving credence to the Major Martin story. The issue of The Times that recorded Major William Martin's "demise" was also the same that announced that of film star Leslie Howard, shot down by Luftwaffe aircraft on the Bay of Biscay. To further the ruse, the Admiralty sent several messages to the Naval Attaché about the papers that Major Martin had been carrying. The Attaché was urgently directed to locate the papers, and, if they were in Spanish hands, to recover them at all costs, but also to avoid alerting the Spanish to their importance. The briefcase and papers had been taken up by the Spanish Navy, who had turned over the documents to the Alto Estado Mayor, the Supreme General Staff.^[6] From there, they apparently disappeared, and even the German Gestapo could not locate them.^[6]

Major Karl-Erich Kuhlenthal, the German's most senior Abwehr agent in Spain, took a keen interest in finding the papers. He stirred up so much attention among the Spanish that Colonel José López Barrón Cerruti, Spain's most senior secret policeman and a keen fascist, took up finding the briefcase. Word of the find reached Abwehr headquarters in Germany. Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, was asked by Kuhlenthal to personally intervene and persuade the Spanish to surrender the documents.^[6] Lieutenant-Colonel Ramón Pardo Suárez located the documents and arranged to make them available to the Germans. The Spanish removed the still-damp paper by tightly winding it around a probe into a cylindrical shape, and then pulling it out between the envelope flap, still closed by a wax seal, and the envelope body. Pardo took the dried contents to the German Embassy and gave Wilhelm Leissner, the Abwehr chief in Madrid, one hour to make copies.^[6] The embassy immediately radioed the text to Berlin, with the paper copies of the photos following a few days later.^{[citation needed]}

The documents were re-inserted into their original envelopes, reversing the process by which they were removed, and returned to the British Attaché by the Chief of Staff of the Navy on 13 May, with the assurance that "everything was there". When the papers were examined after their return, the British analyzed the documents and confirmed they had been opened.^[6] Further confirmation from Ultra prompted a message to Churchill, then in the United States: "Mincemeat Swallowed Whole."^{[citation needed]}

The effort Montagu and his team made to build up Martin's identity paid off. The Germans noted and accepted all the personal details. They noted the date on the ticket stubs, and deduced that Martin must have been flying from Britain to Gibraltar. Ironically, their report gave a wrong date (27 April instead of 22 April), and they concluded that the crash had occurred on 28 April, even though the medical evidence "showed" that Martin had been dead in the water for several days by 30 April. But the Germans missed the contradiction, canceling their own error. As a result, Adolf Hitler was so convinced of the veracity of the bogus documents that he disagreed with Benito Mussolini that Sicily would be the most likely invasion point, insisting that any incursion against the island should be regarded as a feint.^{[citation needed]}

German defensive efforts were substantially redirected: reinforcements were sent to Greece, Sardinia and Corsica instead of Sicily. British commando activities had also been carried out in Greece. The renowned general Erwin Rommel was sent to Greece to assume overall command. A group of "R boats" was transferred from Sicily, and three additional minefields were laid off the Greek coast. Three panzer divisions were moved to Greece – one from France, and two from the Eastern Front. The latter was perhaps the most critical move – reducing German combat strength against the Russians in the Kursk salient^[12] (influencing events on the Eastern Front was apparently neither intended nor foreseen by the British originators of the plan, who were preoccupied with their own part of the war^{[citation needed]}).

On 9 July, the Allies invaded Sicily in Operation Husky. The Germans remained convinced for two more weeks that the main attacks would be in Sardinia and Greece, and kept forces out of action there till it was too late. Only on 12 July did the Germans order the 3rd Regiment of 1st Fallschirmjäger Division to parachute onto the island ahead of the advancing British 8th Army.^{[citation needed]}

Ewen Montagu was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his part in Operation Mincemeat. Charles Cholmondeley was made a Member (MBE) of the Order for masterminding the plan.^{[citation needed]}

Impact on later operations[link]

The success of Operation Mincemeat caused the Germans to disregard later genuine document finds. Examples include:

• Two days after the D-Day landings, the Germans discovered an abandoned landing craft washed up on the Vire estuary in Normandy, containing top secret documents detailing future military targets in the region. Hitler, believing this was a deception similar to Operation Mincemeat, ignored the documents, having already been convinced by numerous deceptions that the main invasion was still to come through the Pas de Calais.^[13]

• During Operation Market-Garden, the drive into the Netherlands in September 1944, a complete operations order with maps and graphics for the airborne phase of the invasion, which was not supposed to be brought with the invading troops, was inadvertently left behind on a transport glider. The operations order fell into German hands, but the Germans, convinced that this was another attempt at Mincemeat-style deception, actually deployed their forces contrary to the information before them.^[14]

[edit] The Man Who Never Was

Duff Cooper was a diplomat who had held several top level posts during the war. In 1950, he published a spy novel, Operation Heartbreak. The key plot device was floating a corpse into Spain with false documents to deceive the Germans. Cooper had come up with the idea on his own, but naturally many of those concerned with Mincemeat (including Germans and Spaniards) became concerned and started talking. The 'flap' attracted the attention of the British press, and wild rumours began to circulate. At this point the British security services decided that the best response was to publish the story. Ewen Montagu took a week-end off from his busy legal practice, and wrote the book The Man Who Never Was.^[15] It was an immediate best-seller and was made into a movie of the same name two years later. The movie added some fictitious elements for drama, such as a German agent in London verifying "Major Martin"'s background, with Montagu and his colleagues one step ahead of him. The submarine used in the film wore pennant number P219, that of HMS Seraph, and she was indeed still in commission in 1954/55.

In 1977, Montagu published a second book, Beyond Top Secret ULTRA, in which he recounted his secret war work. It could not be revealed earlier, as it involved both Ultra and the Double Cross System. In Chapter 13 he gives a short version of the Mincemeat story, including some details not in The Man Who Never Was.

Major Martin[link]

There is no doubt about the identity of the man shown on the Identity Card of "Major Martin". This was MI5 Officer Ronnie Reed, who was also Case Officer for Agent Zigzag. According to Montagu, he "might have been the twin brother of the corpse". But the body of the man known as Major Martin was buried in the "Nuestra Señora de la Soledad" cemetery in Huelva. As Mincemeat became legend, the question persisted about the identity of the person buried there.^{[citation needed]}

The first corpse[link]

In 1996 Roger Morgan, an amateur historian, uncovered evidence that "Martin" was in reality Glyndwr Michael, a Welsh alcoholic vagrant, allegedly from Aberbargoed, whose name is mentioned on the War Memorial of that village and who died of ingesting rat poison, although how this happened is unknown.^{[3][notes 2]} Ben McIntyre confirmed in his book, titled Operation Mincemeat, that the dead man was Glyndwr Michael. He was found on 26 January 1943 in an abandoned warehouse near King's Cross Station in London and was taken to St Pancras hospital suffering from "acute chemical poisoning." It is thought that rat poison, known as 'Battle's Vermin Killer' was used. This was a paste that was laced with highly toxic white phosphorus. The assumption was made that Michael had intended to take his own life. His own father had committed suicide when Michael was 15 years old. His mother died in 1940 and Michael was alone in the world slowly falling into a deeply depressive state. He drifted, as many did, towards London, and was utterly destitute and homeless, his life gradually falling apart. It is also possible that the poisoning was accidental due to a starving Michael having been so hungry that he ate scraps of bread coated with poison to kill rats. Phosphoric poisoning is a horrific way to die, usually taking three days, as the phosphorus reacts with the stomach's own hydrochloric acid to create phosphine gas. Death is due to the breakdown of the central nervous system, jaundice, coma, kidney, liver and heart failure, before death. It took Michael two days to die. He was able to inform his nurses who he was and what he had eaten. He died on 28 January 1943, and when his body reached the hospital's morgue, district coroner Bentley Purchase informed Ewen Montagu that he had found the ideal candidate for his project. McIntyre reported that the corpse was kept refrigerated in the morgue until the mission was ready. Once aboard the Seraph, the body was preserved by placing it in a sealed canister containing dry ice, which prevented oxygen from causing decomposition.^[6] In 1996 The Daily Telegraph published a story based on information released by the Public Record Office and identified the corpse as Glyndwr Michael. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission in January 1998 added an inscription to the gravestone of "Major Martin" in the Catholic cemetery of Huelva that reads, "Glyndwr Michael served as Major William Martin."^[16] The historian Christopher Andrew reaches the same conclusion as to the identity of "Major Martin" in the authorised history of the Security Service, The Defence of the Realm.^[17]

[edit] HMS Dasher connection

In The Secrets of HMS Dasher, authors John and Noreen Steele suggest a different identity for the body. On 27 March 1943 there was an explosion on HMS Dasher (a US-built escort carrier), which was then in the Firth of Clyde, which they ascribe to an accidental torpedoing by a British submarine. Dasher sank, and 379 men were killed. The British authorities tried to keep the story quiet, rather than have the public get upset over alleged defective American shipbuilding. The dead were originally buried in an unmarked mass grave. The Steeles claim that the Mincemeat body was John "Jack" Melville, 37, one of the dead sailors. They assert that Michael's corpse was acquired in January 1943, and would have suffered excessive decomposition by 30 April, even if refrigerated. They claim that freezing was not an option as it would have produced observable changes to the body, which contradicts Montagu's account. (Montagu mentions having to thaw the body's feet so that boots could be put on it.)

According to the Steeles, HMS Seraph was berthed at Blyth, Northumberland, but she was moved all the way around Scotland to Holy Loch, a major submarine base, on the west coast, and much further from London, just before Montagu delivered the canister. The Steeles argue that this makes no sense unless the body originally designated to be "Major Martin" had decomposed and become unusable, and that a "fresh" body from the Dasher disaster was to be substituted. They say Montagu brought the canister from London, but it was empty.^{[citation needed]}

On 8 October 2004, a memorial service was held in Melville's honour aboard the current HMS Dasher, a patrol boat, in which Melville's role as "Major Martin" was officially recognised by the Royal Navy.^{[citation needed]} At the service, Lt. Cmdr. Mark Hill, CO of the naval squadron in Cyprus, said:

"In his incarnation as Major Martin, John Melville’s memory lives on in the film, "The Man Who Never Was". But we are gathered here today to remember John Melville as a man who most certainly was".^[18]

The Dasher theory, however, has been denied by the Naval Historical Branch who responded to a Freedom of Information request (D/NHB/25/56 of 22 January 2010) as follows:

"As far as both the Royal Navy and the Ministry of Defence are concerned, the body used in Operation Mincemeat was that of Glyndwr Michael as described in the files now in The National Archive at Kew. With regard to the memorial service held on board the current HMS DASHER in October 2004, it should be stressed that, despite media emphasis on a possible 'Man Who Never Was' connection, this was a perfectly proper memorial for those lost in the previous ship of that name. It had been cleared through both HQ British Force Cyprus and the Permanent Joint Head Quarters at Northwood. The statements... as accurately reported in The Scotsman, arose through information that they had been given locally, and which they believed in good faith. Unfortunately, the statements had not been referred to this office for an opinion." ^[19]

In popular culture[link]

An episode of the Goon Show was entitled "The Man who Never Was" and was set during the Second World War, referred to a microfilm in the uniform of someone dressed up as a naval officer (though this was about a secret weapon.)^[20] Operation Mincemeat inspired a similar plan in Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, in Red Rabbit by Tom Clancy, in Body of Lies by David Ignatius, in the film version of You Only Live Twice, and in the science fiction series Space: Above and Beyond and the ST:DS9 episode "In the Pale Moonlight". A play of the same name, written by Adrian Jackson and Farhana Sheikh, was first staged by Cardboard Citizens in 2001 in the old Hartley's Jam factory in Southwark. It was staged once again as a site-specific, promenade performance in Cordy House, Shoreditch, in June–July 2009. Cardboard Citizens deals with issues surrounding homelessness, and the play examined identity, together with Major Martin's quest to find out who he was. In 2008 Simon Corble launched his play, also called Operation: Mincemeat with a script-in-hand run performed by the Found Theatre Company.^[21] This play saw its world premiere in the 2010 Adelaide Fringe Festival, performed by the Adelaide University Fringe Club to critical acclaim.^[22] In his book, The Double Agents, W. E. B. Griffin depicts Operation Mincemeat. Fictional characters are blended with Ian Fleming, the actors David Niven and Peter Ustinov, and other historical figures as members of Montagu's "committee" to plan and execute Operation Mincemeat.

See also[link]

• Trojan Horse
• Trout memo

Explanatory notes[link]

Citations[link]

Further reading[link]

• Holt, Thaddeus (2004). The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War. New York: Scribner. ISBN 0-7432-5042-7. 
• Latimer, Jon (2001). Deception in War. London: John Murray. ISBN 0-7432-5042-7. 
• Macintyre, Ben (2010). Operation Mincemeat. The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-0-7475-9868-8. 
• Montagu, Ewen (1977). Beyond Top Secret ULTRA. Coward McGann and Geoghegan. ISBN 0-698-10882-5. 
• Montagu, Ewen (1953). The Man Who Never Was. London: Evans. 
• Reed, Nicholas (2011). My Father, The Man Who Never Was: Ronnie Reed, The Life and Times of an MI5 Officer. Folkestone: Lilburne Press. ISBN 978-1-901167-21-4. 
• Smyth, Denis (2010). Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat. New York: Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-923398-4. 
• Steele, John and Noreen (2002). The Secrets of HMS Dasher. Argyll Publishers. ISBN 1-902831-51-9. 

External links[link]

• Excerpts from the official Top Secret Ultra report on Operation Mincement PsyWar.Org, 3 January 2010.
• The dead tramp who won World War II Daily Mail 15 January 2010.
• "Major Martin's" Grave in Spain
• The Age article – The Man Who Never Was
• Captain Bill Jewell obituary
• Mincemeat and the Imaginary Man – Damn Interesting article
• Spanish language article
• "The Man Who Never Was" movie at the Internet Movie Database*
• BBC article on Operation Mincemeat
• "Operation Mincemeat" 2010 Walker George Films Documentary for the BBC*

Edward Arnold "Eddie" Chapman (16 November 1914 – 11 December 1997) was an English pre-war criminal and wartime spy. During the Second World War he offered his services to Nazi Germany as a spy and a traitor and subsequently became a British double agent. His British Secret Service handlers code named him 'Zigzag' in acknowledgement of his rather erratic personal history. He had a number of criminal aliases known by the British police, amongst them Edward Edwards, Arnold Thompson and Edward Simpson. His German codename was Fritz Graumann or, later, after endearing himself to his German cronies, its diminutive form of Fritzchen.

Background[link]

Chapman was born in Burnopfield, County Durham, England. After serving with the Coldstream Guards in the 1930s, Chapman deserted and became a safecracker with London West End gangs, spending several stretches in jail for these crimes. The gangs utilized gelignite to gain entry to safes, leading Chapman and his associates to be known as the "Jelly Gang." He had affairs with a number of women on the fringes of London high society and then allegedly blackmailed them with photographs taken by an accomplice.

Well along into his criminal career he was arrested in Scotland and charged with blowing up the safe of the headquarters of the Edinburgh Co-operative Society. Let out on bail, he fled to Jersey in the Channel Islands where he attempted unsuccessfully to continue his crooked ways.

Chapman had been dining with his lover and future fiancée Betty Farmer at the Hotel de la Plage immediately before his arrest and made a spectacular exit through the dining room window (which was shut at the time) when he saw undercover police coming to arrest him for crimes on the mainland. It was later that same night, unbelievably, that he committed the slapdash burglary for which he had to immediately begin serving two years in a Jersey prison. This proved to be an ironic twist of fate which ultimately spared him at least 14 more years' imprisonment in a mainland prison afterwards.

Second World War[link]

Chapman was still in prison when the Channel Islands were invaded by the Germans. In prison he met Eric Pleasants and the two became friends. They were later transferred, together with Anthony Faramus, to Fort de Romainville in Paris. Chapman offered his services to them as a turncoat agent. Under the direction of Captain Stephan von Gröning, head of the Abwehr in Paris, he was trained in explosives, radio communications, parachute jumping and other subjects in France at La Bretonnière, near Nantes and dispatched to England to commit acts of sabotage.^[1]

He was dropped near Littleport Cambridgeshire on 16 December 1942 equipped with wireless, pistol, cyanide capsule and ₤1,000.^[2] His mission was to sabotage the de Havilland aircraft factory at Hatfield. However he immediately surrendered himself to the local police and offered his services to MI5.^[1] Thanks to Ultra, MI5 had prior knowledge of his mission.^[3] He was interrogated at Latchmere House in West London, better known as Camp 020. MI5 decided to use him against the Germans and assigned Ronnie Reed as his case officer. (Reed had been invited to join MI5 in 1940 and remained until his retirement in 1976).^[1]

During the night 29–30 January 1943, Chapman with MI5 officers faked a sabotage attack on his target, the de Havilland aircraft factory in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, where the Mosquito was being manufactured.^[1][4] German reconnaissance aircraft photographed the site and the faked damage by Jasper Maskelyne convinced Chapman's controllers that the attack had been successful. In May 1943 he made his way back in the guise of Hugh Anson, an obnoxiously unruly steward, sailing on a merchant ship, the 'The City of Lancaster', from Liverpool to Lisbon in neutral Portugal where he then jumped ship. On making contact with Germans at the Lisbon embassy, for a fee of £20,000 he was given a bomb disguised as a lump of coal to be placed in the coal bunker. However he handed the bomb to the ship's captain. The Germans did not notice the ship was not damaged on the voyage home.^[2][5]

Chapman was sent to Norway to teach at a German spy school in Oslo, Norway. After a de-briefing by von Grunen, Chapman was awarded the Iron Cross for his work in apparently damaging the de Havilland works and the 'City of Lancaster', making him the first Englishman to receive such an award since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.^[1] Chapman was inducted into the German Army as an Oberleutnant or First Lieutenant. (See Macintyre, 2007, pp 231 with photo and 286.) Chapman was also rewarded with 110,000 Reichsmark and his own yacht.^[6] An MI5 officer wrote in an assessment 'the Germans came to love Chapman... but although he went cynically through all the forms, he did not reciprocate. Chapman loved himself, loved adventure, and loved his country, probably in that order'.^[7] While in Oslo he also secretly photographed the German agents who stayed at his safe house.

After Operation Overlord he was sent back to Britain to report on the accuracy of the V-1 weapon. Here he consistently reported to the Germans that the bombs were hitting their central London target when in fact they were undershooting. Perhaps as a result of this disinformation, the Germans never corrected their aim, with the end result that most bombs landed in the South London suburbs or the Kent countryside, doing far less damage than they otherwise would have done. During this period he was also involved in doping of dogs in greyhound racing and was associating with criminal elements in the London's West End night clubs. He was also indiscreet about the sources of his income and so MI5, being unable to control him, dismissed him on 2 November 1944.^[2] Chapman was given a £6,000 payment from MI5 and was allowed to keep £1,000 of the money the Germans had given him. He was granted a pardon for his pre-war activities and was reported by MI5 to have been living 'in fashionable places in London always in the company of beautiful women of apparent culture'.^[7]

Love life[link]

Chapman had two fiancées at the same time on opposite sides of the war, Freda Stevenson in England and Dagmar Lahlum in Norway, each under the protection of and financially assisted by their respective governments.^[8] He abandoned both women after the war and instead married his former pre-war lover Betty Farmer whom he had left in a hurry at the Hotel de la Plage in 1938. He and Farmer later had a daughter Suzanne in 1954. He had told Dagmar at the time he was a British agent. However, Dagmar served a six-month prison sentence for consorting with an apparently German officer: thinking that Chapman was dead, she was unable to prove that he was a British agent. They met again briefly in 1994.

After the war[link]

Chapman had his wartime memoirs serialised in France to earn money, but he was charged under the Official Secrets Act and fined ₤50. A few years later, when they were due to be published in the News of the World the whole issue was pulped. However his book The Eddie Chapman Story was eventually published in 1953.^[2]

MI5 expressed some apprehension that Chapman might take up crime again when his money ran out and if caught would plead for leniency because of his highly secret wartime service. He did get into trouble with the police for various crimes including smuggling in North Africa and more than once had a character reference from former intelligence officers who confirmed his great contribution to the war effort.

Chapman and his wife later set up a health farm (Shenley Lodge, Shenley, Herts) and owned a castle in Ireland. After the war Chapman remained friends with Baron Stefan von Grunen, his Abwehr handler (also known as von Gröning, wartime alias Doctor Graumann),^[8] who by then had fallen on hard times. Von Grunen later attended the wedding of Eddie Chapman's daughter.^[2]

Chapman died on 11 December 1997 from heart failure.

In popular culture[link]

In the 1950s producer Ted Banborough announced plans to make a film about Chapman starring Michael Rennie or Stanley Baker but this did not eventuate.^[9]

The 1966 film Triple Cross was based on the biography of the same name co-written by Chapman and Frank Owen. The film was directed by Terence Young who had known Chapman before the war. Chapman's character was played by Christopher Plummer.^[10] The film was only loosely based on reality and Chapman was disappointed with it. In his autobiography, Plummer said that Chapman was to have been a technical adviser on the film but the French authorities would not allow him in the country because he was still wanted over an alleged plot to kidnap the Sultan of Morocco.^[11] The film gave him a celebrity status for a while and this allowed him to be an occasional crime writer for The Sunday Telegraph.

In May 1989 Chapman made an extended appearance on the Channel 4 discussion programme After Dark, alongside Tony Benn, Lord Dacre, James Rusbridger, Miles Copeland and others.

In 2011, BBC Two broadcast, DOUBLE AGENT: The Eddie Chapman Story, a documentary presented by Ben Macintyre based on his book.^[12]

Playtone has acquired the film rights for Ben Macintyre's book. Mark Bomback is penning with Mike Newell set to direct.^[13]

Bibliography[link]

• Edward Chapman and Frank Owen The Eddie Chapman Story, Pub: Messner, New York City, 1953 (ASIN B0000CIO9B)
• Nicholas Booth, Zigzag – The Incredible Wartime Exploits of Double Agent Eddie Chapman, 2007, Portrait, London (ISBN 0749951567)
• Ben Macintyre (2007). Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman, Lover, Betrayer, Hero, Spy. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 0-7475-8794-9. 
• Nicholas Reed (2011). My Father, the Man Who Never Was: Ronnie Reed, The Life and Times of an MI5 Officer, pp. 60-92. Folkestone: Lilburne Press. ISBN 978-1-901167-21-4. 

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• US Defence Intelligence Agency uses Eddie Chapman case as an example by A Denis Clift, President Joint Military Intelligence College Harvard University 20 February 2003
• Eddie Chapman – The Telegraph 1997
• History: Cases from The National Archives - Eddie Chapman (Agent ZIGZAG) – Security Service MI5

Ben Schwartz
Schwartz performing in 2009
Born	(1981-09-15) September 15, 1981 (age 30) New York, New York
Medium	Television, sketches, webisodes
Notable works and roles	Jean-Ralphio Saperstein in Parks and Recreation Bill Hoyt in Undercovers
Website	RejectedJokes.com
Emmy Awards 2009 Emmy for Outstanding Writing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Special for coauthoring Hugh Jackman's opening number for the 81st Academy Awards[1]

Ben Schwartz (born September 15, 1981)^[2] is an American actor, comedian, and writer. His feature film credits include Peep World^[3] with Rainn Wilson, Michael C. Hall and Sarah Silverman as well as Everybody's Fine with Robert DeNiro. Additionally he had a role in The Other Guys starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg and directed by Adam McKay.

Life and career[link]

On television, Schwartz guest-starred as Jean-Ralphio on NBC’s Parks and Recreation^[4] and is a lead in the Showtime show House of Lies with Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell. In 2010, Schwartz played series regular Bill Hoyt on J. J. Abrams' one-hour spy drama Undercovers for NBC.

Schwartz has been writing, directing and acting in his own short films for some time. He had his own segment on HBO’s Funny or Die Presents called Terrible Decisions with Ben Schwartz and has appeared in multiple CollegeHumor^[5] sketches including the popular web series Jake and Amir. Schwartz has been nominated for two Emmys and won the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Special for coauthoring Hugh Jackman's opening number for the 81st Academy Awards.^[6][1]

He was recently hired by Paramount Pictures to re-make the 1991 classic comedy Soapdish^[6] with producers Rob Reiner and Alan Greisman. And he sold an original pitch to Universal Studios based on an idea by Brian Grazer with Imagine Entertainment attached to produce. He was a staff writer for the third season of Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken and served as a freelance writer for the Weekend Update segment for Saturday Night Live as well as the monologues for the Late Show with David Letterman.^[4]

Schwartz is an alumnus of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (UCBT)^[4] and continues to perform there regularly. Schwartz is a member of the improv group "Hot Sauce" with Adam Pally and Gil Ozeri, the group performs their long-form improv show "Something Fresh" at UCBT every month.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Ben Schwartz at the Internet Movie Database

Wynton Marsalis
Marsalis at the Oskar Schindler Performing Arts Center (OSPAC) Seventh Annual Jazz Festival in West Orange, New Jersey
Background information
Birth name	Wynton Learson Marsalis
Born	(1961-10-18) October 18, 1961 (age 50) New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Genres	Jazz, post-bop, jazz poetry, Classical
Occupations	Composer, trumpeter, Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Opera
Instruments	Trumpet
Years active	1980–present
Labels	Columbia, Sony, Blue Note
Associated acts	English Chamber Orchestra
Website	www.wyntonmarsalis.com

Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is a trumpeter, composer, teacher, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, United States. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences. Marsalis has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and a jazz recording of his was the first of its kind to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Marsalis is the son of jazz musician Ellis Marsalis, Jr. (pianist), grandson of Ellis Marsalis, Sr., and brother of Branford (saxophonist), Delfeayo (trombonist), Mboya, and Jason (drummer).

Life and career[link]

Wynton was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961, the second of six sons of Dolores (née Ferdinand) and Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr., a pianist and music professor.^[1] At an early age, he exhibited an aptitude for music. At age eight, Wynton performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band led by banjoist Danny Barker, and at 14, he performed with the New Orleans Philharmonic. During high school, Wynton performed with the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, New Orleans Youth Orchestra, New Orleans Symphony, various jazz bands and with a local funk band, the Creators.

He graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School with a 3.98 GPA.^[2] At age 17, Wynton was the youngest musician admitted to Tanglewood's Berkshire Music Center, where he won the school's Harvey Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. Wynton moved to New York City to attend Juilliard in 1979, and picked up gigs around town. During this period, Wynton received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to spend time and study with trumpet innovator Woody Shaw, one of Wynton's major influences at the time. In 1980, Wynton joined the Jazz Messengers led by Art Blakey. In the years that followed, Wynton performed with Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, Sonny Rollins, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and countless other jazz legends.

In 1995, PBS premiered Marsalis On Music, an educational television series on jazz and classical music hosted and written by Marsalis. Also, in 1995, National Public Radio aired the first of Marsalis’ 26-week series, entitled Making the Music. Wynton's radio and television series were awarded the George Foster Peabody Award. Marsalis has also written five books: Sweet Swing Blues on the Road, Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life, To a Young Musician: Letters from the Road, Jazz ABZ (an A to Z collection of poems celebrating jazz greats), and his most recent release Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life.^{[citation needed]}

In 1987, Wynton Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. In July 1996, Jazz at Lincoln Center was installed as new constituent of Lincoln Center. In October 2004, Marsalis opened Frederick P. Rose Hall, the world's first institution for jazz containing three performance spaces (including the first concert hall designed specifically for jazz) along with recording, broadcast, rehearsal and educational facilities. Wynton presently serves as Artistic Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center and Music Director for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.^{[citation needed]} One of his most recent releases was a 2011 collaboration with blues-rock guitarist Eric Clapton, a Jazz at Lincoln Center concert that produced the live album Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton Play the Blues.

In December 2011, Marsalis was named cultural correspondent for the new CBS This Morning.^[3]

Awards and recognition[link]

Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards. In 1983 and 1984, he became the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for both jazz and classical records, and he is the only artist to win Grammy Awards for five consecutive years (1983–1987).

Honorary degrees Marsalis has received include those conferred by New York University,^[4] Columbia, Harvard, Howard, the State University of New York, Princeton and Yale. Marsalis was honored with the Louis Armstrong Memorial Medal and the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts. He was inducted into the American Academy of Achievement and was dubbed an Honorary Dreamer by the I Have a Dream Foundation. The New York Urban League awarded Marsalis with the Frederick Douglass Medallion for distinguished leadership and the American Arts Council presented him with the Arts Education Award.

Time magazine list of promising Americans under the age 40 selected Maralis in 1995, and in 1996, Time celebrated Marsalis as one of America's 25 most influential people. In November 2005, Marsalis received the National Medal of Arts. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan proclaimed Marsalis an international ambassador of goodwill for the United States by appointing him a UN Messenger of Peace (2001).

In 1997, Marsalis became the first jazz musician ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his epic oratorio, Blood On The Fields. In a personal note to Marsalis, Zarin Mehta wrote, "I was not surprised at your winning the Pulitzer Prize for Blood On The Fields. It is a broad, beautifully painted canvas that impresses and inspires. It speaks to us all ... I’m sure that, somewhere in the firmament, Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong and legions of others are smiling down on you."^{[citation needed]}

Marsalis won the Netherlands’ Edison Award and the Grand Prix du Disque of France. The Mayor of Vitoria, Spain, awarded Wynton with the city's Gold Medal – its most coveted distinction. In 1996, Britain's senior conservatoire, the Royal Academy of Music, made Marsalis an honorary member, the Academy's highest decoration for a non-British citizen. The city of Marciac, France, erected a bronze statue in his honor. The French Ministry of Culture appointed Wynton the rank of Knight in the Order of Arts and Literature, and in the fall of 2009, Marsalis received France's highest distinction, the insignia Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, an honor that was first awarded by Napoleon Bonaparte.

Statue dedicated to W. Marsalis in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

Marsalis, with his father and brothers, are group recipients of the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Award.^[5]

Marsalis has toured 30 countries on every continent except Antarctica, and nearly five million copies of his recordings have been sold worldwide.

Music awards[link]

Pulitzer Prize for Music

• 1997 Blood on the Fields, oratorio

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, Individual or Group

• 1986 Black Codes (From the Underground)
• 1987 J Mood
• 1988 Marsalis Standard Time - Volume I

Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra)

• 1983 Raymond Leppard (conductor), Wynton Marsalis & the National Philharmonic Orchestra for Haydn: Trumpet Concerto in E Flat/L. Mozart: Trumpet Concerto In D/Hummel: Trumpet Concerto in E Flat
• 1984 Raymond Leppard (conductor), Wynton Marsalis & the English Chamber Orchestra for Wynton Marsalis, Edita Gruberova: Handel, Purcell, Torelli, Fasch, Molter

Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo

• 1983 Think of One
• 1984 Hot House Flowers
• 1985 Black Codes (From the Underground)

Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children

• 2000 Listen to the Storyteller

Criticisms[link]

Several jazz notables have unfavorable views of Marsalis' musicianship. Jazz critic Scott Yanow viewed Marsalis as talented but criticized his "selective knowledge of jazz history" and his regard for "post-1965 avant-garde playing to be outside of jazz and 1970s fusion to be barren" as the unfortunate result of the "somewhat eccentric beliefs of Stanley Crouch.^[6] Trumpeter Lester Bowie said of Marsalis, "If you retread what's gone before, even if it sounds like jazz, it could be anathema to the spirit of jazz."^[7] In his 1997 book Blue: The Murder of Jazz, Eric Nisenson argues that Marsalis's focus on a narrow portion of jazz's past stifled growth and innovation.^[8] In 1997, pianist Keith Jarrett criticized Marsalis saying "I've never heard anything Wynton played sound like it meant anything at all. Wynton has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like a talented high-school trumpet player to me."^[9] Pierre Sprey, president of jazz record company Mapleshade Records, said in 2001 that "When Marsalis was nineteen, he was a fine jazz trumpeter...But he was getting his tail beat off every night in Art Blakey's band. I don't think he could keep up. And finally he retreated to safe waters. He's a good classical trumpeter and thus he sees jazz as being a classical music. He has no clue what's going on now."^[10] Bassist Stanley Clarke said "All the guys that are criticizing—like Wynton Marsalis and those guys—I would hate to be around to hear those guys playing on top of a groove!"^[11] In his autobiography, Miles Davis – who Marsalis said had left jazz and "went into rock"^[12] – hedged his praise of Marsalis by suggesting that he was unoriginal. He also found him too competitive, saying "Wynton thinks playing music is about blowing people up on stage." In 1986, in Vancouver, Davis stopped his band to eject an uninvited Marsalis from the stage. Davis said "Wynton can't play the kind of shit we were playing", and twice told Marsalis "Get the fuck off."^[13]

Some critical exchanges have included insults. Besides insinuating that Davis had pandered to audiences, Marsalis said Davis dressed like a "buffoon." Trumpeter Lester Bowie called Marsalis "brain dead", "mentally-ill" and "trapped in some opinions that he had at age 21... because he's been paid to."^[7][12] Marsalis in reply said Bowie was "another guy who never really could play."^[12]

Marsalis was criticized for pressing his neo-classicist opinions of jazz as producer and on-screen commentator in the Ken Burns documentary Jazz (2001). The documentary focused primarily on Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong among others, while ignoring other jazz artists. David Adler said that "Wynton's coronation in the film is not merely biased. It is not just aesthetically grating. It is unethical, given his integral role in the making of the very film that is praising him to the heavens."^[14]

Discography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Wynton Marsalis

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Wynton Marsalis

• Official website
• Profile at Jazz at the Lincoln Center (click 'more')
• Wynton Marsalis at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Wynton Marsalis in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Wynton Marsalis at the Notable Names Database
• Wynton Marsalis collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Wynton Marsalis on The Tavis Smiley Show, March 15, 2011 (23:31 video)
• Post-Katrina Tulane University Speech
• USA Today Q&A, January 14, 2007
• Wynton Marsalis: Reader's guide