Ill Met by Moonlight
book by W. Stanley Moss
Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe is a non-fiction partly-autobiographical book written by W. Stanley Moss, a British soldier, writer and traveller. It describes an operation in Crete during the Second World War to capture German general Heinrich Kreipe. Moss kept a diary during the war years and based his book on it. The 2014 edition includes an introduction by one of Moss's children and an afterword by Patrick Leigh Fermor.
The story was made into a 1957 film with the same title starring Dirk Bogarde by the British writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
Development and publication
The book recounts Moss's service, alongside Patrick Leigh Fermor, as an agent of Special Operations Executive (SOE), including their kidnapping of Heinrich Kreipe, commander of 22. Luftlande-Division (22nd Air Landing Division) on German-occupied Crete, and Kreipe's removal to Cairo for intelligence and propaganda purposes.
While the manuscript was completed in early 1945, its publication was initially blocked by the head of SOE, Major-General Sir Colin Gubbins, an instruction relayed by Colin Mackenzie (BB100), commander of Force 136.
It was first published in 1950, when it was selected by W. Somerset Maugham as one of the best three books of that year: "more thrilling than any detective story I can remember, and written in a modest and most engaging manner". The book was reprinted twice in both February and March 1950 and again in June that year.
The public source identifies “Ill Met by Moonlight” as book by W. Stanley Moss. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Moonlight, book and Stanley.
Why this record matters
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5998660. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2014, 1957, 1945 and 1950.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ill Met by Moonlight” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.