Michael Burn, a British journalist and author whose eventful life included an early flirtation with Nazism; a daring commando raid on the fortified port of St.-Nazaire, France; imprisonment in Colditz Castle; a love affair with the British spy Guy Burgess; and a timely intervention in the aftermath of World War II that saved Audrey Hepburn’s life, died Sept. 3 at his home in North Wales. He was 97.

The cause was a stroke, said James Dorrian, who is making a film about Burn’s life.

After writing for The Times of London, retiring in the early 1950s and moving to North Wales, he devoted himself to writing, although for a time he organized a mussel-farming cooperative in Porthmadog Harbor.