Heather Rossiter

Herbert Dyce Murphy was born into a wealthy Melbourne family and educated in England , at sixteen he went to sea as an apprentice and sailed around the world. At eighteen Murphy was whaling in the Arctic. At twenty, and up at Oxford, he so convincingly played the female lead in a student production that British Military Intelligence recruited him to spy, in drag, in pre-World War I Europe. This book tells the story of his fascinating double life.

In 1911 Murphy sailed with Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition. Lady Spy, Gentleman Explorer provides the first honest account of their terrible hardship and of a venture which claimed lives – probably unnecessarily – as this controversial view of Mawson demonstrates.

Heather Rossiter is a scientist and writer who has lived and worked on three continents. Her past is littered with husbands, children, career changes and mistakes.

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