Background
Vladimir Peniakoff was born in Belgium to Russian Jewish intellectual parents.
Vladimir Peniakoff was born in Belgium to Russian Jewish intellectual parents.
In 1914 he studied at Street John"s College, Cambridge and describes his early education in Popski"s Private Army: "Foreign years I never had less than three tutors who pumped knowledge into my precocious brain".
Vladimir initially had conscientious objections to the Great War but by his fourth term at Cambridge he had changed his mind. Unlike many of his peers, he opted to join the French artillery as a private rather than go through the lengthy training that a commission in the British Army entailed. He was injured during his time in the French Army and was invalided out after the armistice.
In 1924 he emigrated to Egypt where he worked as an Engineer for a sugar manufacturer.
During this time he learned to sail, fly and navigate vehicles through the desert, becoming a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Vladimir Peniakoff was a polyglot who spoke English, Russian, Italian, German, French and Arabic well.
He was commissioned as a second lieutenant on the British Army General List on 4 October 1940, serving in the Libyan Arab Force. Within a year after his best-selling book on Popski"s Private Army was published he was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumour and died at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London on 15 May 1951.
Pamela Matthews died on 5 December 2005 and is buried beside Popski in Wixoe, Suffolk.