Richard Pape

Richard Bernard Pape MM (17 March 1916 – 19 June 1995) was a British Second World War escapee, adventurer, autobiographer and novelist.

[1] He worked as a journalist in the Yorkshire Post's publicity department, but on the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the Royal Air Force.

[2] In November of that year he was on a retraining course when he was burnt in a drunken motorcycle accident on the Isle of Man, which led to his being hospitalised at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, for pioneer plastic surgery under Archibald McIndoe: he thus became a member of the Guinea Pig Club.

[2] The book was brought to Anthony Blond's London literary agency in 1952 by Vanora McIndoe, Sir Archibald's daughter.

[2][4] He later undertook similar endurance drives in North America for the Rootes Group and embarked on further adventures in Antarctica, where he fell in the sea at McMurdo Sound.