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b. September 21st 1907. (Chelsea, London.)
Father Albert Thomas Finch. (b. 1870) A successful bank manager and stockbroker.
Retired to the country shortly after Graham was born.
Mother Emma Charlotte Aldridge. (b. 1886) Daughter to famous railway tycoon.
Sister Felicity Frances Finch. Nurse. (b. 1906)
A successful product of the ever-rising middle-class, the Finch family settled happily in Hedgton, Hertfordshire in 1912. Albert Finch was a liberal and a futurist, happy to embrace new technologies and ideologies. Consequently, ‘GG’ soon developed a lively and inquiring mind. (Taking after his grandfather, Derwyn.)
1925. Finch begins working for local newspapers and effortlessly surpasses his peers as a writer, researcher and visionary.
1928. The young reporter secures a post at The Times following glowing recommendations from local rags (and a nepotistic foot in the door).
1929. Hitchin, Herts. The Fosbrooke Affair. Lord and Lady Fosbrooke enlist the aid of some ‘specialist’ investigators. (Finch is local and has distinguished himself in the area as a fellow of drive and curiosity as well as the son of a known businessman.) During this escapade he meets Professor Adrian Boothroyd, with whom he is to work closely for many years to come.
Finch and Boothroyd discover that the household butler is in communication with an ancestral spirit buried beneath the manor. The butler is dismissed and the ghost put to rest. The Times agree to print Finch’s extraordinary tale. Critics scoff at the supernatural angle but most agree that bringing the perpetrator of the crime to justice was a noteworthy event. Cashing in on fashionable spiritualism, Finch had used the establishment to make his name. From this point on, anything ‘unusual’ picked up by The Times is passed to Finch.
1929-1930. Finch infiltrates the cults of Yig and Yog-Sothoth. He is encouraged to do so by an apocalyptic monk named Roger deLombrey (an unusual character whose nationality and true loyalties were never known. He would roam around London in a black, bullet-proof cloak.) Finch and Boothroyd are abducted by the cult of Yog but escape with enough information on the cults to protect themselves and drive some of the cultists back to India. (In one of his finer moments, Finch strangled a demon with the rope that previously had bound his hands.)
1930. Goes to Bombay and spends time with Gandhi. Writes his last articles for The Times. More contact with Yog-Sothoth cult.
1931. As a result of Finch’s passion for the paranormal, his precarious relations with Indian sects, his downright refusal to do as he is told, and his forgery of documentation, he is dismissed from The Times. He starts to research an independent journal with Professor Adrian Boothroyd called Arcana. Family pressure to return to ‘traditional’ journalism persists.
1931-33. Arcana fails dismally. Finch is disgraced and discredited. During this time, deLombrey focuses attention on the rise of Adolph Hitler and tries to rope Finch into an assassination plot. Finch visits Munich and Berlin in 1933 and finally falls out with the monk. Boothroyd disappears. Finch spends the best part of a year searching for his friend – a quest that results only in madness and paranoia.
1934-36. Incarcerated at Greygates- an asylum in West Sussex. Finch suffers from extreme paranoia and OCD.
1937-38. Released from Greygates and, with no hope of a job or swift return to normal society, he immediately joins the ‘Brigadistas’ in the Spanish Civil War. He picks up some firearm training and keeps his gun. Was taken prisoner at Arganda. Escapes. Meets George Orwell who later introduces him to Lord Beaverbrook.
1939. Becomes a much-favoured RAF correspondent for Beaverbrook’s The Express. Beaverbrook takes a great liking to Finch, admiring his adventurous spirit and tolerating his eccentricities. Finch’s love of sensationalism is better suited to the tabloids and he settles in swiftly.
1940. Beaverbrook ascends to minister for Aircraft production. Finch is one of the journalists posted to monitor the RAF. His photographic skills soon find him crossing the line from reporter to activist and he begins to help pilots with surveillance.
Throughout the Battle of Britain, Finch was both a correspondent and a surveillance photographer. He has become well-versed in the workings of the RAF and it’s technology. Word must have spread, because by Summer 1941, Finch was asked to join the SOE.
1941. Over the past few months he has assisted in:
1 Forgery of documentation for SOE. Especially German decoy information and fake French/Yugoslavian papers for agents to be posted abroad.
2 A few surveillance-based sorties with the RAF, mostly over northern France and Belgium (in Mosquitoes or Spitfire PRU 19’s.) Although he has also been studying a vast array of unexplained photographs and pilot logs.
His training for field-work has continued. He does not speak enough French or German to send him undercover but he might make a decent scout or lone operative – someone who could get in and out swiftly to locate and recover information. He has had some combat experience (Spain and more recently, Denmark).
Having suffered some serious blows to his sanity he doesn’t quite fit in with polite society but his skills as a journalist and a war correspondent (not to mention his connections with the world of the occult and the paranormal) make him a good choice for a P7 agent.
Finch is tenacious with a good eye for a story. He is skilled in photography, tracking and forgery (having frequently faked documents in search of a scoop). He has also developed competence in firearms, first aid and the occult. He possesses a state-of-the-art surveillance camera and an array of fake passes/documentation.
Many who know him regard his occult experiences as an unfortunate diversion from an otherwise exceptional career future. Finch’s credit rating will be quite high in literary and journalistic circles and he may be familiar to readers of The Express. Senior devotees of The Times may remember him with more disdain.
He divides his time between Benson, Oxfordshire with the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit, and the RAF and SOE HQ’s in the Dover region.
His acute paranoia manifests itself mainly as obsessive compulsive disorder and a need to maintain order and structure in a cosmos a breath away from entropy and madness at all times. His likely to be somewhat of a liability to any party if his paranoia is triggered – he will trust no-one and may turn against those closest to him. |
