Dudley Clarke:Â The Genius of Deception
Sunday, March 22nd, 2026, via Zoom at 2:30 pm (CT)
Could one person change the course of a world war? From 1941 on, while working from rooms over a Cairo brothel, British officer Dudley Clarke conceived a new way of fighting the Nazis; he was turning deception into a global strategy by using the tools of the mind. Deception in war isn’t a new idea at all, but this eccentric colonel realized that global conflict, like World War II, offered the chance to carry out deception on a global scale. Instead of getting the enemy to put a battalion at the wrong end of the line, he would persuade them to put entire armies in the wrong country. His tools, a revolutionary and unconventional approach toward illusion, limitless imagination, and a mind boggling talent for stagecraft, changed how Britain fought the war. But his eccentricity would nearly cost him what he’d created.
Robert Hutton, author of The Illusionist: The True Story of the Man Who Fooled Hitler, spent years in Britain’s archives digging out Clarke’s remarkable story and shares it with us. Now you will learn it as well!
Register for this presentation here.
Even if you can’t attend the live Theodore Talk lecture and discussion, as long as you register in advance you will receive a link to the Zoom recording of the entire event. All Theodore Talks have closed captioning enabled and this year we are offering Translated Captions as well. A list of future Theodore Talks can be found on the American Mensa National Events Calendar at: https://www.us.mensa.org/attend/calendar/, or by viewing the January issue of the Mensa Bulletin.
Theodore Talk lectures take place via the Zoom video conferencing platform on the fourth Sunday of each month at 2:30 pm (CT).
Thank you for your support of the Theodore Talks lecture series which is offered free to all Mensa members in an effort to provide more value to membership. Theodore Talk lectures are now being made possible by the generosity and financial support of Mensa Life Member Dr. Mark Cohen.
Questions? Contact Brad Lucht at [email protected].
