The spy who stayed out in the cold

"Dicketts... Walter Dicketts."

As secret agent introductions go, it's hardly up there with "Bond... James Bond". And Dicketts' codename "Celery" wilts next to "007", who would no doubt fire off a trademark killer pun: "Crunch time for you Celery."

But unlike Bond, and despite a name that makes him sound like an orphan in a Dickens' novel, Walter Dicketts was the real deal: a teenage shell-shocked survivor of the First World War trenches, a womanising, cheating charmer who travelled the world as a confidence trickster, bouncing cheques and breaking hearts.