{"product_id":"the-meinertzhagen-mystery-the-life-and-legend-of-a-colossal-fraud","title":"The Meinertzhagen Mystery: The Life and Legend of a Colossal Fraud","description":"\u003cp\u003eTall  handsome  charming Col. Richard Meinertzhagen (18781967) was an acclaimed British war hero  a secret agent  and a dean of international ornithology. His exploits inspired three biographies  movies have been based on his life  and a square in Jerusalem is dedicated to his memory. Meinertzhagen was trusted by Winston Churchill  David Lloyd George  Chaim Weizmann  David Ben Gurion  T. E. Lawrence  Elspeth Huxley  and a great many others. He bamboozled them all. Meinertzhagen was a fraud. Many of the adventures recorded in his celebrated diaries were imaginary  including a meeting with Hitler while he had a loaded pistol in his pocket  an attempt to rescue the Russian royal family in 1918  and a shoot-out with Arabs in Haifa when he was seventy years old. True  he was a key player in Middle Eastern events after World War I  and during the 1930s he represented Zionisms interests in negotiations with Germany. But he also set up Nazi front organizations in England  committed a half-century of major and costly scientific fraud  and -- oddly -- may have been innocent of many killings to which he confessed (e.g.  the murder of his own polo groom -- a crime of which he cheerfully boasted  although the evidence suggests it never occurred at all). Further  he may have been guilty of at least one homicide of which he professed innocence. A compelling read about a flamboyant rogue  The Meinertzhagen Mystery shows how recorded history reflects not what happened  but what we believe happened.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44987651358773,"sku":"ByrdShop_1597970417","price":28.16,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781597970419.jpg?v=1770950919","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-meinertzhagen-mystery-the-life-and-legend-of-a-colossal-fraud","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}