THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS

All the other names on the Farnham training list are real people, but Knox is a fictional creation.
Professor Frank Knox, described as an Oxford don and animal camouflage expert, shares rooms with Jasper at Farnham and becomes his confidant. Later, as a key member of the Magic Gang in Egypt, Knox contributes to several camouflage projects. His tragic death in a plane crash supposedly inspires Maskelyne to develop fireproof paste for aircrews.
Knox surprisingly does not appear in Magic–Top Secret.
Mindful of Alistair Maskelyne’s warning that many of the personal relationships recorded in The War Magician were fictional, I pressed him about this character. If Knox really did exist, surely he would have been mentioned in one of the wartime letters, especially after his gruesome death?
Alistair responded: “Frank Knox I cannot help you with: the name just doesn’t ring a bell, as, for that matter all the other names of the so-called Magic Gang: not wishing to be negative, but I really think they were created by one or other of the ghost-writers to flesh out their story.”
Interestingly, there is an important clue, easily overlooked, in the preamble to The War Magician: “The events described in this book are true. Everything Jasper Maskelyne is credited with doing he actually accomplished. Some of the characters are composites, and the names of others have been changed for legal reasons.”
Such brazen mendacity! I would suggest the following brutal caveat: “The events described in this book are false. Most of what Jasper Maskelyne is credited with doing he did not actually accomplish. Most of the characters are cardboard composites, and their names, activities and conversation have, for the most part, been invented for narrative convenience.”

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