Something amazing: A Shropshire businessman falling out of the sky and Mystery at Witchend

The latest Secret Shropshire programme on BBC Sounds is intriguing:

In 1937 Max Wenner fell to his death from a plane in one of aviation's greatest mysteries. Wenner was a wealthy landowner and pilot living at Batchcott Hall outside Picklescott in the foothills of the Long Mynd.

Wenner's frequent flights to Germany in the 1930s and visits from high profile Nazis like Joachim von Ribbentrop led to speculation that Wenner may be leading a double life. In January 1937 his body was found in woodland near Genk, in Belgium.

He had fallen out of a passenger plane but no could explain why. Almost ninety years later, the mystery continues to intrgue journalists in the UK, and on the continent.

Johnty O'Donnell visited Batchcott Hall to investigate the mysterious Max Wenner, the man who fell from the sky.

So there were rumours of a nest of Nazi spies in a big house in the shadow of the Long Mynd? Could this story have been an inspiration for Malcolm Saville's first Lone Pine book Mystery at Witchend? 

Wenner's death must still have been the talk of the district when Saville visited Shropshire during the war. Even the name Batchcott echoes the Hatchholt of his book, and I once drew parallels between Mystery at Witchend and the wartime propaganda film Went the Day Well?

While I was writing this the Trivia Desk phoned to point out that Max Wenner was the great uncle of the Blue Peter presenter Christopher Wenner, who later became a crusading documentary maker under the name Max Stahl.