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Tommy’s humour, his women and above all his spectacular stunts meant that he passed into wartime legend as either a lovable maverick or a deadly loose cannon, depending on your point of view.

‘People talk so much of what they will do,’ he told me. ‘I prefer to do it.’

The author Ken Follett readily admits that his novel Hornet Flight was inspired by just one extraordinary episode in Sneum’s eventful war. However, Follett’s understandable distortions in the name of fiction mean that the true story has, until now, never been told. Similarly, no film has ever been made to celebrate Tommy’s sheer audacity, or to examine his ruthless willingness to fight dirty when cornered.

In a letter dated 11 July 2006, MI5 did at least confirm two facts about Thomas Sneum: he had been investigated by the organization during the Second World War for possible treachery; and he had ultimately been cleared. But if they were prepared to admit that much, why wouldn’t MI5 release more information from their files about this agent?

Perhaps the answer lies in the shabby way Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) treated Sneum during the war. That he was investigated at all probably says more about the political infighting between the established SIS and its upstart rival, the wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE), than it does about Sneum’s capacity to double-cross those who stood in his way. At the same time, Tommy’s conduct wasn’t always exemplary either, largely because he considered himself too important, as a source of intelligence, to be compromised. That selfish streak was understandable, perhaps even excusable, in a brave man who risked his life for the Allied cause time and again. But the reader can be the judge of Tommy’s contribution to that cause, and the controversial conduct that often accompanied it.

R.V. Jones was so convinced of Sneum’s value to the Allies that he partly dedicated his book, Most Secret War, to the dashing young pilot. During the war, in addition to being a key scientific adviser to Winston Churchill, Jones was the assistant director of British Scientific Intelligence, one of the component sections of SIS. So he was better placed than most to determine whether Sneum’s name belonged in a list of celebrated super-spies. The dedication read:

To all those in Nazi-occupied Europe who in lone obscurity and of their own will risked torture and death for scientific intelligence, like ‘Amniarix’ (Jeannie Rousseau, Vicomtesse de Clarens), Leif Tronstad, Thomas Sneum, Hasager Christiansen, A.A. Michels, Jean Closquet, Henry Roth, Yves Rocard, Jerzy Chemielewski, and the author of the Oslo Report: To reconnaissance pilots like Eric Ackermann and Harold Jordan: and to the men of the Bruneval Raid.

‘For courage is the quality that guarantees all others.’

Sneum had a paperback edition of the book in his Zurich apartment. It contained a more personal, handwritten dedication from the author: ‘To Thomas Sneum, one of the heroes of this book and the war.’

However, Foreign Office documents recently revealed a very different view of Sneum’s wartime activities in the field, particularly when he was working with a wireless operator called Sigfred Christophersen. When the following extract was written, Major Geoffrey Wethered, who hunted double-agents on behalf of MI5 during the war, had just met with Commander Hollingworth of SOE’s Danish Section. Wethered reported: ‘During their adventures they [Sneum and Christophersen] appear to have given a great deal of information to the Germans about our activities in Denmark, to such an extent SOE sent a message to ARTHUR [the codename of leading SOE agent Mogens Hammer] ... informing him that Sneum had spilt the beans. None of this was told to us until today.’

Was Hollingworth’s accusation motivated by genuine concern about the loyalty of Sneum, an SIS agent, or by his own desire for political gain at a time when his position as an SOE spymaster was under threat?