Thomas Elphinstone Hambledon
|
|
Thomas Elphinstone Hambledon (Tommy Hambledon) is the fictional protagonist of many spy novels written by the British author Manning Coles from 1940 through 1963. Tommy was a teacher in a British boarding school in his first appearance in Drink to Yesterday and, during school vacations, a spy in Germany for the Foreign Office. At the end of this book, which takes place in World War I, he disappears at sea and is presumed dead. He reappears as the hero of the next book, Toast to Tomorrow, which begins in the 1920s. He is an amnesiac in Germany who gradually works his way up in the fledgling Nazi Party until, in 1933, he becomes Hitler's Chief of Police. He then recovers his memory and thereafter battles to defeat Hitler and his plans. After World War II, he continued his career in the Foreign Office and helped defeat a number of Communist plots. In these later adventures, he was frequently added by a semi-comic team of model-makers from the Clerkenwell Road in London, Forgan and Campbell.