as part of the RNVR where he had a varied career, including working for Ian Fleming. Initially he was a watchkeeper in the Admiralty operations room in London. In early 1940 he was a major participant in the failed scheme to block the Danube in Rumania to disrupt German oil imports, working under diplomatic cover as British Vice Consul in Bucharest. Later, in November 1940, leading a joint NID/SOE team Minshall ran Operation Shamrock, where a commandeered fishing smack was used as an observation platform for monitoring German U-boat traffic in the Gironde estuary. Minshall was Mentioned in Dispatches for his part commanding that operation. Subsequently, he ran a section at HMS Flowerdown, using direction finding and transmitter analysis ("Z machines") to identify the positions of individual ships. As such, during May 1941 he played a part in the hunt for the Bismarck. Posted to Fiji, he managed to get his posting changed to New Zealand, where he worked on various intelligence projects, including establishing a Z machine intercept station at Rapuara near Blenheim. Recalled to the UK, he was landed in occupied Yugoslavia as officer in charge of the Allied Naval Mission to Tito in Yugoslavia. Minshall was married four times, the first to Elizabeth Dorothy Magdalene Loveday, from whom he was divorced in 1935. His second wife was Isolde Llewellyn, his third Janine Paulette Sergent of Lyons and fourth Christina Marjorie Zambra, great niece of the Scottish artist Harrington Mann, with whom he had four sons Peter, Matthew, Luke and Timothy. Autobiography Minshall wrote about his life in a book entitled Guilt-Edged, published in 1975. Its content is summed up by Len Deighton in the foreword: "His mother was an spy in World War I. Ian Fleming was his boss throughout the Second World War. Unwittingly sucked into the world of Nazi espionage during an innocent sailing trip, he was seduced by a lovely but lethal German agent and met Field Marshal Göring face to face. He was the first man to cross the Sahara on a motorcycle and while travelling through the Congo, he accidentally discovered a secret German army. But Romania set the scene for the height of espionage activity – when he single handedly pirated a ship from under Nazi eyes and blew up a vital link in German tanker communications. The man is Merlin Minshall and this is his unique story." See also Inspirations