USING words such as "incredible" in the context of wartime spy stories can often lead to cliché country. However, it's pretty tempting in the case of Eddie Chapman.

A brief précis of his tale goes like this. Chapman, ladies' man and safe-breaker, was in prison in Jersey when the Germans seized the Channel Islands. When he offered to spy for them he was snapped up by the Abwehr, the German secret service, and parachuted into East Anglia in 1942.

The dapper Chapman immediately contacted the police, and trod the remarkably risky path of a double agent, codename ZigZag, flitting between Britain and the Continent.

Not content with feeding false information to his Abwehr bosses and pretending to blow up a British aircraft factory, he also offered to attempt to assassinate Hitler. The offer wasn't taken up by his MI5 bosses.

As well as being introduced to the German army's senior general, Gerd von Runsdedt, he also claimed to have met Churchill.

Such was his "success" that the Germans awarded him the Iron Cross. He never got a medal from his own country, though he was pardoned for his pre-war crimes.