‘A public urinal where ministers and officials queued up to leak’

Anyone brought up as I was in a Daily Express household in the 1950s — there were approaching 11 million of us readers — knew the writings of Chapman Pincher. His frequent scoops, mostly defence- or intelligence-related, sometimes political, scientific or medical, were unusually well-sourced and headline-grabbing. Now, aged 100, he has written his autobiography. He writes as directly and vividly as ever.

After an enjoyable Darlington childhood, he progressed through grammar school to King’s College, London, where he won prizes for zoology and botany and published research papers as an undergraduate. He became a teacher and got into freelance journalism via the Farmer & Stockbreeder. A scientific future beckoned but the second world war intervened and he found himself in the army as a weapons specialist. Knowledge and contacts gained there enabled him to freelance incognito for the Express while still serving, taking a permanent job the day after he was demobbed.