The Chancellor

CHANCELLOR was the code name Britain's Special Operations Executive used for one heroic agent fighting behind enemy lines in France during the dark days of 1944. This is the first biography of him, the ‘sailing Scotsman’: George Reid Millar, DSO MC (1910-2005). It is fair to say George loved water. He rowed for his university, worked his passage to the Pacific as a steamer’s deckhand and searched for a liner’s sunken treasure off Ireland. On a reporting job, he got a scoop on the Wallis Simpson story by breakfasting aboard the royal yacht with King Edward VIII. He joined the army after a spell in the Daily Express Paris bureau, and got captured in Libya. Two breakouts failed and he found himself inside Germany. An amazing escape followed. He then parachuted back into Nazi-held France and fought with the Resistance. The war over, the memoirs a publishing success, Millar - with his new wife - voyaged into a Mediterranean Sea which was reopening to foreigners again. This book reveals that George carried a secret cargo aboard their yacht. George became a remarkably skilled inshore cruising yachtsman - even daring to rip a line of seaweed off the very tip of Brittany. In his 40 years of sailing he never once used a marina, and his voyages read like an index to Europe’s best undiscovered anchorages. Unpublished novels, hitherto private correspondence and archive material tell the tale of a brilliant man of letters, a talented boatman and equestrian, whose work has been latterly neglected.

• Stock code: RB0650
• Author: Ben Lowings
• Publisher: Instructional
• Publication details: 18, Paperback
• Edition: 1st
• Edition date: 2021
• ISBN: 9781914408434