A York man who spied for Britain in the last war has broken cover to write his first novel. CHRIS TITLEY met him

LIFE as a wartime secret agent was not particularly glamorous, insists Norman Lee. "It was almost nine to five. It was very ordinary. We didn't think we were doing anything very great."

Moments earlier he had talked of being parachuted behind enemy lines, wading through rivers to escape the Germans and wiring back crucial information to the Allies. Hardly another day at the office.

Although Mr Lee looks back at his own daring exploits with remarkable detachment, he realises how captivating they are to other people. So he has now turned his adventures into a novel, The Balkan Butterfly.

This action-packed wartime thriller adds another heading to Mr Lee's extraordinary CV: first-time novelist, aged 87.

Mr Lee's full name is Frederick Norman Lee-Oldfield, which he shortened for the book jacket to make it easier for readers to remember. He has lived in York for more than 40 years, but hails from Devon.

A brilliant student, he studied at the London School of Economics. In the fourth year of his degree he was invited by his tutor to the Traveller's Club in London.

"The third party was a mandarin at the Foreign Office," Mr Lee recalled, sitting in a high-backed armchair in his flat off Bootham. "We had a very nice lunch and a chat and I realised very, very soon that I was being co-opted. Eventually I joined the Foreign Office."

He became a secret agent. His first posting was to Paris, to perfect his French - he already spoke fluent Greek. The next posting was to Albania, where he posed as an archaeologist to dig up information useful to the British Government.

After war broke out, Mr Lee became part of a highly secret unit, the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Formed in 1940 with a brief from Winston Churchill to "set Europe ablaze", the agency co-ordinated subversion and sabotage against the enemy by all means necessary, using disguise, deception, bribery and even assassination.

Mr Lee was parachuted into the Greek mountains in 1941. He was to stay there until October 1945.

What was he after? "Information. Movements of German troops was a big one, which wasn't difficult: you just secreted yourself in a cave somewhere and watched them move."

He transmitted his findings to his headquarters in Cairo via a wireless hidden in a suitcase.

"The Germans broke my code within a fortnight. I knew they had broken it so we sent out misinformation," he said.

If Mr Lee had been captured by the enemy, he would have been on his own. Those were the rules of the SOE. And he came perilously close to being caught.

"The Germans knew we were there. There was a period when they chased me from village to village.

"Unfortunately the Greeks suffered because the Germans burned each village as I got out. I kept about two villages ahead of them."

It must have been terrifying - but he is having none of that sort of talk.

"You don't think of those things as dangerous. I would cross rivers, with two sticks because of the movement of the water, to get from one village to another.

"It was easier when you're being chased to go across the river than climb one mountain, go down the other side and onto another mountain.

"You don't think of fear. You're so tired, you sleep in wet clothes. You're storing up trouble for yourself in your 70s and 80s," he adds, ruefully. Mr Lee's walking stick is hanging off the wing of his chair: he now suffers from terrible rheumatism.

After the war was over, he continued working as a secret agent. His right leg had to be rebuilt after his all-terrain vehicle crashed when he was in Saudi Arabia.

While recovering in a military hospital in Egypt, he met his wife, Ilse, a nurse. They married in 1948 at the wonderfully-named desert church St Martin-in-the-Sands, and are still together.

Mr Lee left the service in the Fifties, and after training to be a barrister he became a lecturer in law at university at what became Cleveland University in Middlesbrough.

He has always written, and has three unpublished novels under his belt. He was delighted when The Balkan Butterfly was accepted by a publisher.

"It started off several years ago as my memoirs. Then I realised if it was going to be interesting I was going to upset the Foreign Office.

"I forgot about it as a memoir and wrote it as a novel."

It tells the story of cousins John Maddox and Mary Thomson who work as wartime agents for Britain in Central Europe. They must use all their ingenuity to complete their hazardous work and survive.

Mary's tumultuous personal life earns her the title The Balkan Butterfly. "She starts off having an affair with her father - incest - and she goes to bed with a lot of people. She doesn't discriminate very much.

"I wanted her to be in certain situations, to find trouble with the Foreign Office."

He wrote the novel on his hardy old manual typewriter. "I used to sit about in this chair, with a gin, and think and think and think. And then, after lunch, I would go to the typewriter and knock out three to three and a half thousand words' worth, all the time rushing to keep up."

The sequel is already half written. Mr Lee sees any financial reward from his debut novel as a bonus. "I have got terrific satisfaction out of writing it and finishing it," he said.

The Balkan Butterfly by Norman Lee is published by Minerva, price £16.99. It can be ordered through Unity Distribution on 01536 747628. A BBC2 series about the SOE, Secret Agent, starts on Thursday at 9pm.