Dukes, Sir Paul (1889-1967)
Dukes, Sir Paul (1889-1967)
British author, secret agent, and pioneer of yoga in Western countries, Dukes was born in 1889. He was educated at Caterham School, England, and Petrograd Conservative, Russia. Dukes was always seeking and affirming a higher purpose in life than everyday existence. His first marriage, in 1922, was to Margaret Rutherford; his second, in 1959, to Diana Fitzgerald.
As a young man he took a position as a language teacher in Riga, Latvia. He later moved to St. Petersburg, where he was a secret agent in prerevolutionary Russia. In 1913 he spent a season in the Russian province of Tula, acting as a tutor, and briefly claimed an ability for psychic healing.
After World War I, in 1921 he became a special correspondent of The Times newspaper in Eastern Europe. Under the name "Paul Dukaine" he appeared on stage in a ballet act. Dukes also studied yoga, lectured, traveled widely, and wrote a number of books on a variety of topics. He was director of a company that manufactured components for the British Ministry of Aircraft Production. During his travels he met mystics and wonder workers, and also spent a night alone in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh in Egypt. He died on August 27, 1967 in Capetown, South Africa.
Sources:
Dukes, Paul. Come Hammer, Come Sickle. N.p., 1947.
——. Red Dusk and the Morrow. N.p., 1922.
——. The Unending Quest. London, 1950.
——. Yoga for the Western World. N.p., 1953.
——. The Yoga of Health, Youth and Joy. N.p., 1960.