Lancelot Speed's cartoon work is the source of the nickname for the colourful commander of the WWII Special Forces unit "Popski's Private Army".
He was privately educated in Belgium and went up to St John's College, Cambridge, becoming an ardent Anglophile, influenced by Bertrand Russell.
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Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Peniakoff DSO MC, a Belgian of White Russian descent, was called "Popski" by Bill Kennedy Shaw, the Intelligence Officer of the Long Range Desert Group, because his signallers had trouble with the spelling of his surname.
Pamela Matthews died on 5 December 2005 and is buried beside Popski in Wixoe, Suffolk.
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He married Pamela Firth on 2 April 1948 (she went on to marry T. S. Matthews, former editor of Time magazine, after Popski's death).