Charles Turner (1907 – 1977) was an English

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

and part-time

spy Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...

, who took the last recorded British pre-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

photographs of

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

. Born in the early 1900s, Turner's life changed when his father died and his godfather

Henry Pelham, 7th Duke of Newcastle Henry may refer to: People * Henry (given name) *Henry (surname) * Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry Royalty * Portuguese royalty ** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal ** Henry, Count of Portugal ...

took care of the young boy. Turner attended

Worksop College Worksop College (formerly St Cuthbert's College) is a British co-educational independent school for both day and boarding pupils aged 13 to 18, in Worksop. It sits at the northern edge of Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire, England. Founded ...

, the public school endowed by the Duke of Newcastle. He gained a place at Cambridge university to study music. In the late 1920s into the 1930s he became a broadcast composer and fluent German speaker. In 1934 Turner made the first of a series of annual visits to the Wagner festival in

Bayreuth Bayreuth (, ; bar, Bareid) is a town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The town's roots date back to 1194. In the 21st century, it is the capital of U ...

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

. In 1938 the British secret service

MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Go ...

, convinced war was imminent, needed to urgently examine and assess the German threat. Approached by mutual friend Alan Angles, later of the War Office and Directorate of Ministry of Aircraft Production, Turner was recruited to infiltrate Hitler's entourage at the 1939

Bayreuth Festival The Bayreuth Festival (german: link=no, Bayreuther Festspiele) is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived ...

. Registered as a guest of the Führert, Turner was hosted by Dr Fritz streit Chairman of the Bavarian Chamber of Commerce, through whom he received an invitation to follow the Führer's itinerary on Wednesday 26 July 1939. This unexpected opportunity allowed Turner to photograph Hitler and his intimates throughout the day. He took photographs of Hitler and other leading Nazis including propaganda Minister

Joseph Goebbels Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 19 ...

, Hitler's Deputy,

Rudolf Hess Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (Heß in German; 26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987) was a German politician and a leading member of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, Hess held that position unt ...

and "

Strength Through Joy NC Gemeinschaft (KdF; ) was a German state-operated leisure organization in Nazi Germany.Richard Grunberger, ''The 12-Year Reich'', p. 197, It was part of the German Labour Front (german: link=no, Deutsche Arbeitsfront), the national labour org ...

" leader Dr

Robert Ley Robert Ley (; 15 February 1890 – 25 October 1945) was a German politician and Labour Union, labour union leader during the Nazi era; Ley headed the German Labour Front from 1933 to 1945. He also held many other high positions in the Party, inc ...

. Turner subsequently delivered a report back to London which is still regarded as top secret, if indeed it still exists. Having married in 1941 and started a family, Turner's work post war often took him to Moscow. Reportedly on one occasion he took his son on tour of a housing estate in a search for the British spy

Kim Philby Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 191211 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer and a double agent for the Soviet Union. In 1963 he was revealed to be a member of the Cambridge Five, a spy ring which had divulged British secr ...

. This may mean that Turner was still working in the interests of British Intelligence. His son is at pains to say that his father may have gathered Intelligence but was never a spy. Charles Turner died in 1977, and his photographs of Hitler were released to the public in 2007. Townhall.com::Home::About US

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Turner, Charles 1907 births 1977 deaths Musicians from Nottinghamshire English spies 20th-century classical musicians 20th-century English composers