This is entertaining.  Roald Dahl, famous author of children’s stories such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and nasty little shockers such as Man From the South, was apparently a spy for the British government during World War II.  His job?  He was part of a group tasked with getting U.S. involvement in the war, and his role was gathering intelligence from wealthy women.

This is not necessarily surprising, in hindsight; Dahl wrote a number of very randy stories, including a very nasty one called The Visitor, about a playboy named Oswald Cornelius who has one sexual adventure too many.  Dahl’s stories contain a significant amount of cynicism, which one might expect from a man whose task was to exploit women romantically and sexually for information.

I wrote a ‘horror masters’ post on Dahl some time ago, and it can be found here.  This is the second surprise spy revelation within a month; thank goodness Julia Child was apparently tasked with a different sort of information gathering.