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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Graham Keeley

Our man on the rock: The untold story of the aristocrat who spied on Germans from a Mediterranean outcrop

Photograph: University of Murcia

Archaeologists excavating treasures dating from the fifth century on a tiny island off Spain have also dug up the story of an unsung British spy.

Hugh Pakenham Borthwick lived on Fraile, a speck in the Mediterranean near Aguilas in southeastern Spain during the First World War.

Tall and aristocratic, Borthwick kept a gun under his pillow at night, spent his time making notes of passing German warships and destroyed the paperwork afterwards, according to those who knew him.  

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