Background
His mother died in the torpedoing and sinking of the ocean liner Steamship City of Benares in September 1940.
Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom
His mother died in the torpedoing and sinking of the ocean liner Steamship City of Benares in September 1940.
Hesketh was educated at Eton from where, in 1922, he was commissioned into the Duke of Lancaster"s Own Yeomanry as a 2nd Lieutenant. He attended university at Christ Church, Oxford, and was called to bar in 1928 at the Middle Temple.
During the, in February 1940, then at the rank of Major, he transferred to the Royal Artillery from the Yeomanry. He wrote a history of his role and the operation that was published after his death. He was then asked to write a history of deception in Western Europe, including the work up to and including Operation Fortitude.
In the 1970s books about deception began to appear.
Sefton Delmer"s 1971 book, The Counterfeit Spy, appeared to be copied from Hesketh"s earlier unpublished report. Noel Wild had provided Delmer with a copy of the report.
Hesketh was annoyed and threatened to sue, however the Government claimed Crown Copyright on his report and he was not able to In the end Delmer added a cr to the second edition of the book, and Hesketh, along with other deceivers, were able to correct inaccuracies.
Hesketh"s report was eventually published posthumously, in 1999, with a foreword by "Nigel West" (the pseudonym of Rupert Allason).
Hesketh was High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1947 and later Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire from 1950 to 1972. He remained a reserve officer in the Territorial Army, with the honorary rank of Colonel, until 1957. In 1970, he was appointed Officer (Civil Division) of the Order of the British Empire, at the time he was Chairman, Lancashire Agricultural Executive Committee.
His name changed twice: the first time in 1907, when his father changed the family name from Bibby-Hesketh to Fleetwood-Hesketh, and on 10 August 1956, when he changed his name by deed poll to the unhyphenated form of Roger Fleetwood Hesketh.
In the 1960s, Hesketh rebuilt the family home of Meols Hall, Southport (he had a hobbyist interest in architecture). He died in 1987.
40th United Kingdom Parliament. 41st United Kingdom Parliament]
He was Member of Parliament (Member of Parliament) for Southport from 1952 to 1959. As Lieutenant Colonel, Fleetwood-Hesketh was a member of Ops (B), the deception section of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces that helped plan Operation Fortitude, a key portion of Operation Bodyguard, the deception plan covering the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944.