M. R. D. Foot

Michael Richard Daniell Foot was born on 14 December 1919 and died on 18 February 2012. He was a British historian specializing in political and military history, with a focus on intelligence operations during World War II. Foot served as a British Army intelligence officer with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War and later authored the official history of SOE's activities, particularly in France.

Foot was the son of a career military officer. For his education, he attended Winchester College and subsequently studied at New College, Oxford. During his time at Oxford, he developed a romantic relationship with Iris Murdoch.

At the outbreak of World War II, Foot joined the British Army and was commissioned into a Royal Engineers searchlight battalion. In 1941, the searchlight units transferred to the Royal Artillery. His service number was 85455. By 1942, he was stationed at the Combined Operations Headquarters. Seeking active combat experience, he joined the Special Air Service (SAS) as an intelligence officer, participating in operations in France after D-Day. During this period, he was temporarily captured and sustained severe injuries during an escape attempt. His service with the French Resistance was recognized with two mentions in despatches and the award of the Croix de Guerre. He concluded the war with the rank of major.

Following World War II, Foot continued his military service in the Territorial Army, transferring to the Intelligence Corps in 1950. Concurrently, he pursued an academic career. He taught at Oxford University for eight years before becoming a Professor of Modern History at the University of Manchester in 1967. The experiences gained during the war fostered his enduring interest in European resistance movements, intelligence activities, and the treatment of prisoners of war.

As an historian, Foot gained access to official records of the SOE, which enabled him to produce comprehensive accounts of its wartime activities. His work on the history of SOE's operations in France faced a four-year delay in approval for publication. His publication, *SOE in France*, remains a definitive work on the subject.

In his personal life, Michael Foot was distantly related to the British politician Michael Foot. He was once married to philosopher Philippa Foot (née Bosanquet), granddaughter of U.S. President Grover Cleveland. His second wife was Elizabeth King, with whom he had two children: a son and Sarah Foot, a historian. In 1972, he married Mirjam Romme, who became a noted historian of bookbinding under her married name.

Foot is uniquely noted for being the only real person mentioned in the spy novels of John Le Carré.

He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2001 and received the Territorial Decoration for long service in the Territorial Army.

Selected publications by M. R. D. Foot include *Gladstone and Liberalism* (1952), *British Foreign Policy since 1898* (1956), *SOE in France* (1966), *The Gladstone Diaries* (from 1968), *Resistance – An Analysis of European Resistance to Nazism 1940–1945* (1977), *MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939–1945* (1979), *SOE: The Special Operations Executive 1940–1946* (1984), *Open and Secret War, 1938-1945* (1991), *Oxford Companion to World War II* (1995), *Foreign Fields* (1997), and *Memories of an SOE Historian* (2008).

His articles and book reviews have also contributed to the academic discourse on military and political history.