Stephen Verney

Stephen Edmund Verney, MBE (17 April 1919 – 9 November 2009) was the second Bishop of Repton from 1977 to 1985; and from then on an honorary assistant bishop within the Diocese of Oxford. Toward the end of WWII Verney worked as an undercover political operative in occupied Crete. Biography Verney was the son of the Liberal MP Sir Harry Verney, 4th Baronet, and grandson of a Viceroy of India. His eldest brother was Sir Ralph Verney, 5th Baronet. Another brother was the judge Sir Lawrence Verney. He was educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford. At the beginning of the Second World War as a conscientious objector, he served with a Friends Ambulance unit but later became a Royal Army Service Corps private in Cairo. Here as an Oxford classicist he was recruited into the Political Operations Executive and sent into occupied Crete in August 1944, working undercover from Chania, with the objective of lowering German morale. His role principally involved identifying and approaching dissatisfied German soldiers. With the assistance of a German sergeant major, in love with a Cretan Woman, he printed and distributed “Kreta Post” a subtle propaganda paper, in German, from a cave outside Chania. Following the fall of Mussolini he slipped into the camp of an Italian battalion forced by the Germans to fight on and negotiated with the Colonel the surrender of the entire battalion.