Tall, slim and invariably straight-faced no matter the subject of conversation, a trick learnt as a prisoner of war under interrogation, Michael Foot had the speech and impeccable manners of an Edwardian gentleman. Even acerbic criticism of someone he judged a fraud was expressed with meticulous control and in concise and properly formed sentences. He found humour more readily in a situation — often of his own making — than in mere verbal exchange.
The early years of the Second World War with a searchlight unit of AntiAircraft Command proved unexciting so in August 1942 he contrived a transfer to Combined Operations HQ as a junior staff officer evaluating intelligence reports. In this capacity he became involved in the planning of small-scale Commando raids on the French coast and accompanied one raiding party to the mouth of the Somme. His aim was to verify the intelligence on the defences there, which was found to be correct but the fortifications unmanned.
His reputation for intelligence work established, he was mentioned in dispatches and posted as the IO (Intelligence Officer) of the Special Air Service Brigade being formed from experienced SAS units to take part in the invasion of northern France.
When the invasion was launched there was no immediate need for the brigade HQ to go to France, as the units were deployed on disparate missions. Foot, however, was able to persuade the commander, Brigadier R. W. McLeod, to send him on a special mission, for which he flew to Meucon near Vannes, in Brittany.
Hitler’s infamous “Commando order” of 1942, under which Allied soldiers operating in the rear of the combat zone were to be executed on capture, still applied and reports had reached England that one Oberleutnant Bonner had been subjecting SAS prisoners to brutal interrogation. Foot was sent to south Brittany to find and deal with him. Instead, he was himself taken prisoner.
The French Resistance in Brittany had risen spontaneously and taken control of many of the small towns and nodal points in the communication system, anticipating the SAS units sent for that very purpose. In consequence, isolated groups of the German Army were holding out here and there, while the garrison at Brest prepared for siege. Travelling by car with a French SAS warrant officer in search of news of Bonner, Foot walked forward to check a bridge and was captured by the enemy detachment holding it. He avoided identification as an SAS officer thanks to one of the Germans on the bridge cutting off the recognisable wings to add to his collection.
Incarceration followed in a makeshift PoW camp in a derelict factory at St Nazaire with a motley group of other prisoners until Foot and a Sapper captain were able to prise open an iron grill on one of the factory windows and get away. Travelling as they thought more quickly alone, Foot stumbled into quicksand on the north bank of the Loire, saving himself only by flinging out his arms as widely as possible. He dragged himself clear only to walk into a German sentry on the edge of the town and be returned to captivity.
A second opportunity to escape through the briefly unguarded gate of the camp ended when he and his companion met the camp commandant who ordered them, “Zurück” (back) at the point of his Luger. His third attempt, after forcing the lock of their hut at night and scaling the 14ft perimeter fence initially augured well for Foot and his companion, a fluent German-speaker. Heading north, they chose an isolated farmhouse as a refuge but after climbing through a window they were knocked senseless by the farmer’s two strapping sons armed with pitchforks.
Foot was badly concussed and had a cracked skull and a dislocated neck so his companion took him to the nearest outpost, which turned out to be manned by Georgian troops conscripted into the Wehrmacht. He regained consciousness in an American field hospital and discovered that he owed his freedom to an exchange of prisoners. His active service ended there; later he received the Croix de Guerre for his part in the liberation of France.
Demobilised, he returned to complete his degree at New College, Oxford, from where he graduated with a disappointing second in PPE, an abiding interest in Gladstone and a generous gold-dusting from the teaching of Alan Bullock, Isaiah Berlin and John Wheeler-Bennett.
Remaining at Oxford to teach, he immersed himself in Gladstone studies, completing a volume on him begun by J. L. Hammond for A. L. Rowse’s Teach Yourself History series (1952). He also worked for Stanley Morrison on the five-volume History of The Times newspaper and in 1956 was invited by OUP to take on the Herculean task of editing the Gladstone diaries. This eventually ran to 12 volumes, the first two appearing in 1968.
Perhaps on the strength of his first-hand experience of special forces during the war, in 1960 he was commissioned to research and write the official history of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), formed by Winston Churchill in 1940 after the withdrawal from Dunkirk to “set Europe ablaze” by fostering sabotage and subversion in the German-occupied countries.
Granted access to the huge volume of papers on SOE and the reports of individual agents after each mission abroad, he was instructed to work only from them and avoid discussion with former SOE personnel. This arrangement carried the in-built hazard of him not receiving information that, for one reason or another, did not appear on paper. The first book, SOE in France (1966), permitted an inference that a few SOE agents — including Odette Hallowes, GC — had received reputations in the public perception greater than the evidence suggested was merited. This caused concern among SOE veterans. The publishers settled threatened libel actions out of court.
This book and Resistance (1976), Six Faces of Courage (1978), MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939-1945 (1979) and SOE in the Low Countries (2001) carved for him pre-eminence in Britain on all matters relating to Resistance in the Second World War, adding to his already established reputation as a leading scholar of Gladstone. In best academic tradition he chose to be known by his initials, also a convenient means of avoiding any confusion with the other Michael Foot, the one-time leader of the Labour Party.
The son of a mining engineer, Michael Richard Daniell Foot was born in 1919. He won scholarships to Winchester and New College. He joined the Territorial Army while an undergraduate and following his wartime adventures would concede that the war had taught him something about strategy, tactics, logistics, intelligence, planning and secrecy. He would add, “I have been shot at, parachuted, helped to plan raids, taken part as observer in air operations and in a sea commando raid, organised escapes and succeeded in hiding my military identity during German interrogations.”
Foot’s enormous literary output was combined with an active academic career. Appointed Professor of Modern History at Manchester in 1965 he moved on in 1973 to become Director of Studies at the Foreign Office’s European Discussion Centre at Wilton Park in West Sussex. He wrote numerous entries for postwar volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography and in the early 1980s he was a regular contributor to The Economist and of SOE obituaries to The Times. He also produced Art and War (1990) for the Imperial War Museum and The Oxford Companion to World War II (2001), which he edited with I. C. B. Dear.
A man of considerable personal charm, he had a few light-hearted entanglements at Oxford and what he characterised as a brief and unsuccessful affair with Iris Murdoch in the early years of the war. He could deliver a stream of anecdotes about SOE agents and operations in the same clipped vein in which he wrote and share a bottle of claret for lunch into his nineties.
In addition to the Croix de Guerre awarded in 1945, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Orange Nassau in 1989 and CBE in 2001. In 1999 he was the recipient of a festshrift, War, Resistance and Intelligence, to reflect his substantial contribution to war and Cold War studies and his inspiration to many writers and researchers. In 2003 he was one of 500 Pioneers of the Realm invited by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Coronation.
His autobiography, Memories of an S.O.E. Historian, was published by Pen & Sword in 2008.
He was married first to Philippa Ruth Bosanquet in 1945 — later better known as the distinguished moral philosopher Philippa Foot (obituary, October 7, 2010). This marriage was dissolved in 1960 when he married Elizabeth King. His second marriage was also dissolved and in 1972 he married Mirjam Michaela Romme, later Professor of Library and Archive Studies, University College London. He is survived by his third wife and a son and daughter from his second marriage. The daughter, Sarah Rosamund Foot, is Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Oxford.
Professor M. R. D. Foot, CBE, historian, was born on December 14, 1919. He died on February 18, 2012, aged 92
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