Charles Henry Maxwell Knight
OBE, known as Maxwell Knight, (9 July 1900 – 27 January 1968) was a British
spymaster
A spymaster is the person that leads a spy ring, or a secret service (such as an intelligence agency).
Historical spymasters
See also
*List of American spies
*List of British spies
* List of German spies
*List of fictional spymasters
This is ...
,
naturalist and
broadcaster, reputedly a model for the
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
character
"M". He played major roles in surveillance of an early British Fascist party as well as the main Communist Party.
Background
Knight was the son of Hugh Coleraine Knight, a
solicitor
A solicitor is a legal practitioner who traditionally deals with most of the legal matters in some jurisdictions. A person must have legally-defined qualifications, which vary from one jurisdiction to another, to be described as a solicitor and ...
, and his wife, Ada Phyllis (
née
A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...
Hancock). He was christened in Holy Innocents Church, South Norwood on 3 August 1900.
Career
Military
He saw service during the First World War. Having been a naval cadet, he was appointed to the temporary rank of
Midshipman
A midshipman is an officer of the lowest rank, in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Canada (Naval Cadet), Australia, Bangladesh, Namibia, New Zealand, South Afr ...
in the
Royal Naval Reserve
The Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) is one of the two volunteer reserve forces of the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom. Together with the Royal Marines Reserve, they form the Maritime Reserve. The present RNR was formed by merging the original Ro ...
on 2 May 1918.
The National Archives
National archives are central archives maintained by countries. This article contains a list of national archives.
Among its more important tasks are to ensure the accessibility and preservation of the information produced by governments, both ...
, reference ADM 240/49/4.
In July 1918 he attended a
hydrophone
A hydrophone ( grc, ὕδωρ + φωνή, , water + sound) is a microphone designed to be used underwater for recording or listening to underwater sound. Most hydrophones are based on a piezoelectric transducer that generates an electric potenti ...
officers' course, and in August served for a short time as First Class Hydrophone Officer aboard the trawler, ''Ninus''. On 1 September 1918 he was appointed to the armed merchant cruiser, HMS ''Andes''. In December 1918 Captain C.T.H. Cooper of the ''Andes'' described him as "a promising young officer." He was demobilised in February 1919.
Having left the navy, he worked as a teacher in a preparatory school and as a freelance journalist.
MI5
In an unpublished memoir, Knight recalled that he joined the first of the Fascist Movements in Britain,
Rotha Lintorn-Orman
Rotha Beryl Lintorn Lintorn-Orman (7 February 1895 – 10 March 1935) was the founder of the British Fascisti, the first avowedly fascist movement to appear in British politics.
Early life
Born as Rotha Beryl Lintorn Orman in Kensington, London ...
's
British Fascisti
The British Fascists was the first political organisation in the United Kingdom to claim the label of fascist, although the group had little ideological unity apart from anti-socialism for much of its existence, and was strongly associated with ...
, in 1924, "at the request of the late Sir
George Makgill who was then running agents on behalf of
Sir Vernon Kell, Director General of the British Security Service, MI5. I remained with this organisation until 1930 when it more or less became ineffectual. My association with this body was at all times for the purposes of obtaining information for HM Government and also for the purposes of finding likely people who might be used by this department for the same purposes."
He served as the organisation's director of intelligence.
[S Twigge, E Hampshire, G Macklin ''British Intelligence'', The National Archives, Kew, 2008, p. 33]
During the 1920s, on Knight's instructions, six British Fascists, posing as Communists, joined the
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...
to work as penetrator agents for Makgill's section 2B.
In time Knight became MI5's chief 'agent runner', being deployed principally against the Communist Party.
He rose to be head of section B5(b), responsible for infiltrating agents into potentially subversive groups. Initially, he ran the Section from his flat in Sloane Street but later, he did so for years from 308, Hood House,
Dolphin Square
Dolphin Square is a block of private apartment, flats with some ground floor business units near the River Thames in Pimlico, Westminster, London built between 1935 in architecture, 1935 and 1937 in architecture, 1937. Until the building of High ...
in London, again separate from the rest of MI5.
The most prolific agents that Knight recruited were women, including Kathleen Tesch, Olga Grey and Mona Maund who managed to infiltrate the Communist Party, according to Hemming's 2017 biography of Knight.
Joan Miller, who was recruited as an agent by Knight and had a close personal relationship with him, remembered that he felt very deeply about the threat of Communism: "his views on this subject, you might say, amounted almost to an obsession. He was equally adamant in his aversion to Jews and homosexuals, but prepared to suspend these prejudices in certain cases. 'Bloody Jews' was one of his expressions (you have only to read the popular novels of the period - thrillers in particular - to understand just how widespread this particular prejudice was)."
Notwithstanding this, Miller imagined Knight himself was a homosexual, although his third wife, Susi Maxwell Knight, rejected the allegation.
[Patricia Craig]
Unreliable Witness
Intelligence Analysis and Reporting (23 February 2013). Miller wrote that Knight was also "neurotic, anti-Semitic and obsessed with the occult" but in the 2017 biography,
Henry Hemming claims that Miller's statements were "fantastical". Hemming does state that Knight was a virulent anti-communist and that none of his three marriages was consummated.
A respected case officer, Knight achieved successes with the infiltration of political groups, leading to the internment and imprisonment of fascists and fascist sympathisers regarded as a threat to the United Kingdom, such as Albert Williams, Percy Glading, George Whomack,
Anna Wolkoff
Anna Nikolayevna Wolkova (1902 – 2 August 1973), sometimes known as Anna de Wolkoff, was a White Russian émigrée, and secretary of The Right Club, which was opposed to Britain's involvement in World War II.
Early life
She was the elde ...
,
Tyler Kent
Tyler Gatewood Kent (March 24, 1911 – November 20, 1988) was an American diplomat who stole thousands of secret documents while working as a cipher clerk at the US Embassy in London during World War II.
Early life and career
Kent was born in ...
, leading anti-semite, Captain
Archibald Maule Ramsay
Archibald is a masculine given name, composed of the Germanic elements '' erchan'' (with an original meaning of "genuine" or "precious") and ''bald'' meaning "bold".
Medieval forms include Old High German and Anglo-Saxon .
Erkanbald, bishop o ...
MP and
Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician during the 1920s and 1930s who rose to fame when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. He was a member ...
.
During his career with MI5, Knight found that there was "a very long standing and ill-founded prejudice against the employment of women as agents", a position with which he did not agree. Indeed, many of his best agents were women. Agents working under him included
Olga Gray (who infiltrated the leadership of the Communist Party of Great Britain), and Joan Miller (who "penetrated the
anti-semitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
underworld of British Fascism").
His early warnings of communist infiltration of MI5 were not taken seriously. Patricia Craig notes that his paper, "The Comintern is not dead", which predicted with great accuracy the developments in Russia's policy with regard to Britain after the war, "was dismissed as 'over-theoretical' by
Roger Hollis
Roger is a given name, usually masculine, and a surname. The given name is derived from the Old French personal names ' and '. These names are of Germanic origin, derived from the elements ', ''χrōþi'' ("fame", "renown", "honour") and ', ' ...
, and various other Soviet experts considered it unimpressive."
Moreover, when, in 1941
Anthony Blunt
Anthony Frederick Blunt (26 September 1907 – 26 March 1983), styled Sir Anthony Blunt KCVO from 1956 to November 1979, was a leading British art historian and Soviet spy.
Blunt was professor of art history at the University of London, dire ...
informed
Harry Pollitt
Harry Pollitt (22 November 1890 – 27 June 1960) was a British communist who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) from 1929 to September 1939 and again from 1941 until his death in 1960. Pollitt spen ...
that
Tom Driberg
Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell (22 May 1905 – 12 August 1976) was a British journalist, politician, High Anglican churchman and possible Soviet spy, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1942 to 1955, and again from 195 ...
was an informer, and Driberg was expelled from the Communist Party, Knight developed the suspicion that his unit had been infiltrated by the
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
, but Blunt's treachery remained undiscovered for some years.
A failure of Knight's section was the entrapment of
Ben Greene
Ben Greene (28 December 1901 – October 1978) was a British Labour Party politician and pacifist. He was interned during the Second World War because of his fascist associations and appealed to the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords aga ...
, an anti-war activist, interned on the orders of the then
Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national ...
,
Sir John Anderson
John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley, (8 July 1882 – 4 January 1958) was a Scottish civil servant and politician who is best known for his service in the War Cabinet during the Second World War, for which he was nicknamed the "Home Front Pr ...
, as a result of false evidence given by Knight's agent provocateur, Harald Kurtz.
Having been gazetted as a
Second Lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank.
Australia
The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army until ...
on the Special List in September 1939, Knight was given the army rank of
Major
Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...
during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, but designated as a "Civil Assistant, General Staff,
War Office
The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...
." He was appointed as an
Officer of the Civil Division of the Order of the British Empire in June 1943.
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a ...
, the author of the
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
series of books, used an amalgam of Knight and his former superior
Rear Admiral
Rear admiral is a senior naval flag officer rank, equivalent to a major general and air vice marshal and above that of a commodore and captain, but below that of a vice admiral. It is regarded as a two star "admiral" rank. It is often regarde ...
John Henry Godfrey
Admiral John Henry Godfrey CB (10 July 1888 – 29 August 1970) was an officer of the Royal Navy and Royal Indian Navy, specialising in navigation. Ian Fleming is said to have based James Bond's boss, " M", on Godfrey.
Life and career
God ...
, Director of the
Naval Intelligence Division, as a model for the character "
M," Bond's boss. However, based on his research, Knight's biographer Henry Hemming made this comment: "To my mind Admiral John Godfrey was the main inspiration for the personality of Fleming's M, yet the name of Fleming's character can be traced back to Maxwell Knight".
[Interview with Henry Hemming, author of ‘M: Maxwell Knight, MI5's Greatest Spymaster’](_blank)
/ref>
BBC
In 1946, Knight, who had been an ardent naturalist since childhood, began what was to become a successful broadcasting career on BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
radio, appearing in, and hosting such programmes as ''Naturalist'', ''Country Questions'' and ''Nature Parliament''. He appeared occasionally on television: in
's ''Look'' and in ''Animal, Vegetable or Mineral''.
Knight conducted his broadcasting career alongside his work in intelligence, until 1956, when he retired early from MI5, on the grounds of ill health, suffering from
, 'Goo', in ''A Cuckoo in the House'' (1955), was "one of many agents feeding into the phenomenon of British spies being bird enthusiasts. 'Birdwatcher' is old intelligence slang for spy. And the cuckoo – which infiltrates and imitates – was an ideal muse for a spy like Knight."
Fellow naturalist and Knight enthusiast,
, writes that "the cuckoo's life beautifully mirrored the concerns of Knight's own. First, its sex life was mysterious and secretive. So was Knight's: for years, he'd maintained a hearty heterosexual facade while picking up rough trade in local cinemas and employing local motorcycle mechanics for reasons other than repairing motorcycles. Second, cuckoos were the avian equivalents of the officer-controller of penetration agents; they 'insinuated' their 'chameleon eggs' into the nests of their 'dupes'."
Spies and birders, she writes elsewhere, "have the same skills, the ability to identify, recognise, be unobtrusive, invisible, hide. You pay careful attention to your surroundings. You never feel part of the crowd."
on 29 December 1925 to Gwladys Evelyn Amy Poole. Knight married Lois Mary Coplestone in 1937, and latter married Susan Barnes ("Susi") in 1944. Knight's biography indicates that he was a jazz aficionado, had a significant interest in exotic animals and was an ardent fascist.
Knight retired from the Security Service in 1961. By then he had made over 300 radio broadcasts, had appeared in 40 television programmes and had penned numerous books about natural history and animals.
Knight spent his last years at "The Wing", Josselyns,
on 24 January 1968.
After his death, the Maxwell Knight Memorial Fund was set up, which provided for the Maxwell Knight Young Naturalists' Library in the education centre of the
. After Knight's death, a wildlife memorial fund was established in his name, headed by
and Peter Scott.
Knight's biographer makes this comment about the spymaster's legacy:
On the other hand, Henry Hemming's 2017 biography states that Knight was responsible for warning
in 1939 that he was to be arrested, allowing the latter to move to Germany where he was renowned for his wartime propaganda broadcasts as "
".
In October 2015, a hitherto unpublished 50,000-word manuscript, entitled "The Frightened Face of Nature", written by Knight in 1964, and discovered by Professor John E. Cooper and Simon H. King in Knight's personal filing cabinet, was published in ''
'', under the headline, "Spectre of destruction": The Lost Manuscript of the Real-Life 'M'.