Marc H Stevens

Personal Bio

Marc Stevens was born in Montreal, Canada, but grew up between Ottawa and Toronto.  He has spent forty years working in the wholesale food industry (mainly wholesale chocolate).  Bitten at a young age by the travel bug, he has visited about 70 countries and all 7 continents.

Marc’s father (Squadron Leader Peter Stevens MC) died in 1979, when Marc was in his early 20’s.  About seven years later, Marc decided to try and discover exactly what his father had done during World War 2 to be awarded the Military Cross, a very rare honour for a member of the Royal Air Force.

Eighteen years of research, off and on, slowly allowed Marc to piece together an unique and fantastic tale, of the only German Jew known to have piloted RAF bombers against his homeland.  As a German living in London at the outbreak of war, Marc’s father committed identity theft in order to enlist in the RAF, and was the object of a Metropolitan Police manhunt as a potential enemy spy.

After locating and finally obtaining access to a Home Office file marked “Secret – Sealed until 2051”, Marc decided that a book would have to be written, and so followed ‘Escape, Evasion and Revenge: The True Story of a German-Jewish RAF Pilot Who Bombed Berlin and Became a POW’. 

Neither Marc, nor anyone else in his immediate family, had known of his father’s Jewish origins.  As a POW in his own country for three years and eight months, Peter Stevens was without any protection whatsoever under the Geneva Convention.  Had the Nazis ever discovered his true identity, the consequences would have been unpleasantly fatal.  Nonetheless, Peter Stevens made eight escape attempts, getting outside the wire on three occasions.

After the war, Peter Stevens spent five years as an MI6 operative in Germany, spying against the Russians at the height of the Cold War.

In 2021, ‘Escape, Evasion and Revenge’ was ranked by The Guardian as #5 on their list of the 10 Best Books About Revenge [ever written].  Ahead of The Bible, Gone Girl, Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, and Crime and Punishment, it was the only non fiction book on that list, and the only one not yet made into a film.

Marc is understandably proud of his father’s accomplishments, and only wishes he could have known of them while his father was still alive.  He has citizenships of Canada, the UK and Germany.