Shooting and Fishing: He was dubbed “Passion pants” by the girls, for his tartan trews

I dragged two of my semi-grown-up children to the launch of Ben Macintyre’s new book, Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies in the Cabinet War Rooms under Horse Guards Parade recently.

I thought perhaps it would be educational, added to the fact it normally costs £16 to get in. We had wangled the invite because I had sent Macintyre a couple of photos of my uncle, who played a key role in setting up and running the British wartime Double Cross system – turning German spies into double agents and feeding a mixture of true and false information back to the enemy.

Before the war he had been in the Seaforths, but had rather expensive tastes. (The actor David Niven was an army friend, tearing up to London from Dover every night for parties). His father eventually tired of shelling out for Savile Row suits and sports cars. So he left the army and settled for a dull job in a firm of discount brokers until rescued by the old boy network and recruited into MI5 where he ended up tapping King Edward Vlll’s phone during the Abdication crisis.

In wartime he was back in uniform, dubbed “Passion pants” by the girls in the office, for his Mackenzie tartan trews. What I have to thank him for, apart from being born British instead of German, is an introduction to kite flying; not ordinary kites, but the birds of prey. How on earth the subject ever came up I have no idea, but he claimed, presumably truthfully, to have at some time before the war gone after grouse with a canvas kite made of, among other things, the bendy struts of an umbrella.

He had tried it in his teens on holiday in Newtonmore just before the end of the season when the birds were pretty wild. So rather than spook them before being able to get within gunshot, they had walked downwind with the hovering hawk-like contraption out in front. Ideally, he reckoned you should try and float it up and over a ridge so that the guns were out of sight as the kite appeared over the crouching grouse on the other side – assuming there were any. At its approach the birds sat tight, giving the guns and dogs a chance to creep up within range.

I’ve never got it to work, not because I haven’t got a kite like a bird – I’ve made several in anticipation – but because I can never find someone fool enough to let me loose on their grouse moor. They usually think it’s a joke.

I told this story about the great TAR, as he was called in MI5, bamboozling grouse with a kite, to a TV documentary producer at the book launch. He looked completely appalled and said he thoroughly disapproved of shooting.