The Shooting Star: The Colourful Life and Times of Denis Rake, MC

Denis Rake, born in 1901, was the son of a Times correspondent in Brussels and a Belgian soprano. He spent his youth in a circus—and in Occupied Belgium in World War I. Rake spent some years as the gay lover of various exotic European mentors. He was working at Drury Lane with Ivor Novello when war broke out. He became an SOE wireless operator, and served in France with immense courage on two missions, surviving capture by the Germans and escape across the Pyrenees. Slight of stature and defiantly gay even when living amid a band of maquis (resistance fighters) in the Auvergne, Rake was one of the most raffish and endearing of SOE's extraordinary gallery of stars, and was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery in battle.