The Inventive Life of George H. McFadden

Download or read book The Inventive Life of George H. McFadden written by Richard Carreño and published by . This book was released on 2024 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Born into the upper reaches of Philadelphia society, George H. McFadden (1907-1953) was expected to join the McFadden family cotton brokerage-or become a polo-playing playboy like his father. Instead, McFadden made his own path. Fascinated by the ancient world, he offered to fund the Penn Museum's excavations at Kourion, a Greco-Roman site in Cyprus. He joined the dig himself as a self-trained archaeologist, leading to some tension with the professional archaeologists. Over several decades, McFadden created a comfortable life there, replete with a gracious villa and yacht, as a respected figure in the local community. World War II turned Cyprus and nearby Alexandria into a central node for Allied intelligence work. Along with his archaeologist colleagues, McFadden enlisted in the US Navy and joined the ranks of the just-forming OSS to work alongside British spy networks. He volunteered his yacht for government service, ferrying assets across the Mediterranean. Even among the colorful personalities of that world, McFadden kept his sexual orientation private, with a care enforced by the ultra-conservative confines of his upbringing. He spent vacations away from his colleagues in the German Alps, working on his own translation of the Iliad, which had first inspired his love of the ancient world. A mysterious sailing accident in Cyprus brought McFadden's life to an untimely end at age 45 -with the future of the Kourion dig in doubt, and his exploits as a spy unknown. For the first time, The Inventive Life of George McFadden brings the fascinating details of his story to light"--