Henry Chapman Pincher (29 March 1914 – 5 August 2014) was an English journalist, historian and novelist whose writing mainly focused on espionage and related matters, after some early books on scientific subjects.

[1] Aged 10, he won a scholarship to Darlington Grammar School where he took an interest in genetics, afterwards studying zoology and biology at King's College London.

When World War II began, Pincher joined the Royal Armoured Corps, served in tanks and became a Staff Officer.

As a defence correspondent for the Daily Express,[6] Pincher developed his own style of investigative journalism, actively seeking out high-level contacts to obtain secret information.

Assigned to cover the stories of physicists Alan Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs, who in the early post-war years were unmasked as Soviet spies, espionage became a particular interest of Pincher's.

[8] Pincher is best known as the author of the book Their Trade is Treachery (1981), in which he publicized for the first time the suspicions that MI5's former Director General Roger Hollis had been a spy for the Soviet Union, and described MI5's and MI6's internal inquiries into the matter.

Pincher became ensnared in 1986 in the Spycatcher affair, when Wright tried to publish his own book in Australia, in apparent violation of his oath-taking of the Official Secrets Act when he joined MI5.

[11] The matter led to prolonged legal wrangling, with the British government mounting a strong defence against publication, which was ultimately unsuccessful through three levels of the Australian court system.