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Geoffrey Pyke
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Geoffrey Pyke
Geoffrey Pyke (9 November 1893 – 21 February 1948) was an English journalist, educationalist, and inventor.
Pyke came to public attention when he escaped from internment in Germany during World War I. He had travelled to Germany under a false passport, and was soon arrested and interned.
During the Second World War, Pyke proposed the newly invented material, pykrete, for the construction of the ship Habakkuk.
Geoffrey Nathaniel Joseph Pyke was born on 9 November 1893 in Kensington to Lionel Edward Pyke QC, a barrister, and Mary Rachel Pyke (née Lucas). Pyke was the cousin of Magnus Pyke.
From 1907 to 1909, Pyke was educated at Wellington College. At his mother's insistence, Pyke maintained the dress and habits of an Orthodox Jew. He became an atheist when he was thirteen. The persecution he suffered instilled in him a hatred of and contempt for "The Establishment". After two years at Wellington, he was withdrawn, tutored privately and then admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge, to study law.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Pyke quit his studies to become a war correspondent. He persuaded the editor of the Daily Chronicle to send him to Berlin. He used the passport obtained from an American sailor by travelling via Denmark. In Germany, he conversed with local Germans, and eavesdropped on other people's conversations, witnessing the mobilisation of Germans for war with the Russian Empire.
In early October, 1914, after six days in Germany, Pyke was arrested in his bed-sitting room, and was taken away leaving a letter written in English on his desk. Confined to a small cell in solitary confinement, he believed that he might not be executed after all; remarking that "the German government was not going to waste 4d on my keep if it was going to be faced with burial expenses on the fifth day". During captivity, he reflected on hunger:
Hunger – real hunger – not your going without afternoon tea, or no-eggs-at-breakfast sort of affair – can, when a man is utterly without occupation, make life one continual aching weary desire. If the desire is not satisfied, or does not abate of its own accord (as it very often does), it can have disastrous effects on a man's mind. It has been known to make men think very seriously about the rights of property, and a few have become so unbalanced as to become socialists.
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Geoffrey Pyke
Geoffrey Pyke (9 November 1893 – 21 February 1948) was an English journalist, educationalist, and inventor.
Pyke came to public attention when he escaped from internment in Germany during World War I. He had travelled to Germany under a false passport, and was soon arrested and interned.
During the Second World War, Pyke proposed the newly invented material, pykrete, for the construction of the ship Habakkuk.
Geoffrey Nathaniel Joseph Pyke was born on 9 November 1893 in Kensington to Lionel Edward Pyke QC, a barrister, and Mary Rachel Pyke (née Lucas). Pyke was the cousin of Magnus Pyke.
From 1907 to 1909, Pyke was educated at Wellington College. At his mother's insistence, Pyke maintained the dress and habits of an Orthodox Jew. He became an atheist when he was thirteen. The persecution he suffered instilled in him a hatred of and contempt for "The Establishment". After two years at Wellington, he was withdrawn, tutored privately and then admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge, to study law.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Pyke quit his studies to become a war correspondent. He persuaded the editor of the Daily Chronicle to send him to Berlin. He used the passport obtained from an American sailor by travelling via Denmark. In Germany, he conversed with local Germans, and eavesdropped on other people's conversations, witnessing the mobilisation of Germans for war with the Russian Empire.
In early October, 1914, after six days in Germany, Pyke was arrested in his bed-sitting room, and was taken away leaving a letter written in English on his desk. Confined to a small cell in solitary confinement, he believed that he might not be executed after all; remarking that "the German government was not going to waste 4d on my keep if it was going to be faced with burial expenses on the fifth day". During captivity, he reflected on hunger:
Hunger – real hunger – not your going without afternoon tea, or no-eggs-at-breakfast sort of affair – can, when a man is utterly without occupation, make life one continual aching weary desire. If the desire is not satisfied, or does not abate of its own accord (as it very often does), it can have disastrous effects on a man's mind. It has been known to make men think very seriously about the rights of property, and a few have become so unbalanced as to become socialists.
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