HE WAS the infamous double agent who passed secrets to the Russians during the Second World War and part of the Cold War.

British intelligence officer Kim Philby was a member of the Cambridge Five, a group of spies who passed so much information to the Soviet Union that the KGB suspected some of it was false.

Now Philby's lesser-known role as an instructor at a top secret training base in Hampshire is explored in a new novel.

Andrew Duncan's Somerville's War is a story about the "finishing school" established at Beaulieu by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which aimed to cause chaos behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Daily Echo:

Secluded country mansions on Lord Montagu's Beaulieu Estate were taken over by the clandestine organisation in the early 1940s.

More than 3,000 agents are thought to have passed through Beaulieu. They included Violette Szabo, who was immortalised in the 1958 film Carve Her Name with Pride, starring Virginia McKenna.

Philby helped devise the school's syllabus and also taught students about political propaganda, including the art of spreading false rumours.

Somerville's War is billed as the first fictional treatment of life at the training centre. According to the publishers it also includes the first description of a 23-year-old girl flying a Spitfire in combat.

Mr Duncan's family have lived in Beaulieu for almost a century.

Daily Echo:

He said: "I've been a journalist and publisher all my working life so perhaps it was natural to want to have a go at fiction.

"No-one has realised SOE Beaulieu in fiction, or the women pilots attached to the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). I felt I had some insights into these subjects and thought an original story could be made by combining them."

"I hope Kim Philby gives the story an extra interesting dimension.

"His obsessional nature is part of the story’s psychological subtext. I'm hoping readers will detect there is more to this tale than just a WW2 thriller-romance."

TV historian Dan Snow, who lives near Beaulieu, has described Somerville's War, as a "novel for anyone who loves the New Forest".