Rupert William Simon Allason (born 8 November 1951) is a British former Conservative Party politician and author. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for

Torbay Torbay is a unitary authority with a borough status in the ceremonial county of Devon, England. It is governed by Torbay Council, based in the town of Torquay, and also includes the towns of Paignton and Brixham. The borough consists of ...

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

, from

1987 Events January * January 1 – Bolivia reintroduces the Boliviano currency. * January 2 – Chadian–Libyan conflict – Battle of Fada: The Military of Chad, Chadian army destroys a Libyan armoured brigade. * January 3 – Afghan leader ...

1997 Events January * January 1 – The Emergency Alert System is introduced in the United States. * January 11 – Turkey threatens Cyprus on account of a deal to buy Russian S-300 missiles, prompting the Cypriot Missile Crisis. * January 1 ...

. He writes books and articles on the subject of

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...

under the pen name Nigel West.

Background

Born in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, Allason and his brother, Julian, were brought up as

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

s, the faith of their Irish mother, Nuala (who acted under the names Nuala McElveen and Nuala Barrie), daughter of John A. McArevey, of

Foxrock Foxrock () is an affluent suburb on the southside of Dublin, Ireland. It is within the county of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, in the postal district of Dublin 18 and in the Catholic parish of Foxrock. History The suburb of Foxrock was developed ...

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

.Burke's Landed Gentry, eighteenth edition, vol. I, ed. Peter Townend, 1965, Burke's Peerage Ltd, p. 9 The boys attended

Downside School Downside School (formally The College of St Gregory the Great, Downside but simply referred to as Downside) is an 11–18 mixed, Roman Catholic, independent, day and boarding school in Stratton-on-the-Fosse, Somerset, England. It was establish ...

. Their father, James Allason, was also a Conservative Party MP, descended from the architect Thomas Allason.

Political career

Allason contested

Kettering Kettering is a market town, market and industrial town, industrial town in the North Northamptonshire district of Northamptonshire, England, west of Cambridge, England, Cambridge, southwest of Peterborough, southeast of Leicester and north- ...

1979 Events January * January 1 ** United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim heralds the start of the ''International Year of the Child''. Many musicians donate to the ''Music for UNICEF Concert'' fund, among them ABBA, who write the song ...

and

Battersea Battersea is a large district in southwest London, part of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross and also extends along the south bank of the Thames Tideway. It includes the Battersea Park. Hist ...

1983 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning of the ...

before being elected as Conservative MP for Torbay in 1987. He was opposed to integration with the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

; in 1993 he was the only Conservative to refuse to vote for the

Maastricht Treaty The Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, is the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU). Concluded in 1992 between the then-twelve Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Communities, ...

when it was made into a

motion of confidence A motion or vote of no confidence (or the inverse, a motion or vote of confidence) is a motion and corresponding vote thereon in a deliberative assembly (usually a legislative body) as to whether an officer (typically an executive) is deemed fi ...

. The vote was narrowly won, but Allason's abstention caused him to have the

party whip A whip is an official of a political party whose task is to ensure party discipline (that members of the party vote according to the party platform rather than their constituents, individual conscience or donors) in a legislature. Whips a ...

withdrawn for a year. He left parliament after the landslide 1997 general election in which he lost his seat to Liberal Democrat Adrian Sanders. His margin of defeat was just twelve votes, one of the narrowest election margins since 1945. It was reported that Allason had failed to tip a pub waitress a week before polling day, and that as a consequence, fourteen waiters who were going to vote for him switched to the Liberal Democrats. In 2000, Allason was reported to have considered joining the

UK Independence Party The UK Independence Party (UKIP, ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of parliament (both through defect ...

(UKIP). Author

Jon Ronson Jon Ronson (born 10 May 1967) is a British-American journalist, author, and filmmaker. He is known for works such as '' Them: Adventures with Extremists'' (2001), '' The Men Who Stare at Goats'' (2004), and '' The Psychopath Test'' (2011). H ...

, in the first chapter of his book '' Them: Adventures with Extremists'', briefly analysed Allason's career and character, with particular emphasis on his 1997 electoral loss.

Literary career

As an author, Allason has concentrated on security and intelligence issues. He was voted 'The Experts' Expert' by a panel of other spy writers in ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. In 1993 it was acquired by Guardian Media Group Limited, and operated as a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' ...

'' in November 1989. In 1984 ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...

'' commented: "His information is so precise that many people believe he is the unofficial historian of the secret services. West's sources are undoubtedly excellent. His books are peppered with deliberate clues to potential front-page stories." Allason has been a frequent speaker at intelligence seminars and has lectured at both the

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square,

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

; and at the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where he once addressed an audience that included the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

spy

Aldrich Ames Aldrich Hazen Ames (; born May 26, 1941) is an American former Central Intelligence Agency, CIA counterintelligence officer who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1994. He is serving a life sentence, without th ...

. He continues to lecture to members of the intelligence community at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

His special contribution to the study of modern historical espionage has been in tracking down former agents and persuading them to tell their stories. He traced the wartime double agent GARBO, who was reported to have died in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

in 1949. However, Allason found him in

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

, and they collaborated on the book ''Operation Garbo'', published in 1985. He was also the first person to identify and interview the mistress of Admiral Canaris, the German intelligence chief who headed the

Abwehr The (German language, German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', though the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context) ) was the German military intelligence , military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ...

, and he was responsible for the exposure of Leo Long and Edward Scott as Soviet spies. His titles include ''The Crown Jewels'', based on files made available to him by the

archives in Moscow; ''VENONA'', which disclosed the existence of a

GRU Gru is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the ''Despicable Me'' film series. Gru or GRU may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * Gru (rapper), Serbian rapper * Gru, an antagonist in '' The Kine Saga'' Organizations Georgia (c ...

spy-ring operating in London throughout the war, allegedly headed by J. B. S. Haldane and

Ivor Montagu Ivor Goldsmid Samuel Montagu (23 April 1904, in Kensington, London – 5 November 1984, in Watford) was an English filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, film critic, writer, table tennis player, and Communist activist and spy in the 1930s. He help ...

; and ''The Third Secret'', an account of the CIA's intervention in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

. ''Mortal Crimes'', published in September 2004, investigates the scale of Soviet espionage in the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

, the Anglo-American development of an

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear expl ...

. In 2005 he edited ''The Guy Liddell Diaries'', a daily journal of the wartime work of

MI5 MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), officially the Security Service, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Gov ...

's Director of Counter-Espionage. He also published a study of the

Comintern The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internatio ...

's secret wireless traffic, ''MASK: MI5's Penetration of the Communist Party of Great Britain'', and the first of a series of counter-intelligence textbooks, ''The Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence'', ''The Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence'' and ''The Historical Dictionary of Cold War Counter-Intelligence''. In his 2018 book, ''Cold War Spymaster: A Legacy of Guy Liddell, Deputy Director of MI5'', the author did not suggest that Liddell had passed secrets to the Soviets, as had been claimed by some other authors, including John Costello in his ''Mask of Treachery''. In fact, Allason under the 'West' pseudonym stated that Liddell "was betrayed by Burgess, Blunt and Philby", according to a 2019 summary of the book.

Legal actions

Allason has been involved in a number of legal cases, in each of which he represented himself without lawyers. While in the House of Commons, he campaigned against the use of

public-interest immunity Public interest immunity (PII), previously known as Crown privilege, is a principle of English law, English common law under which the English courts can grant a court order allowing one litigant to refrain from Discovery (law), disclosing evidence ...

certificates, and exposed the arms-dealing activities of the publisher and fraudster

Robert Maxwell Ian Robert Maxwell (born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch; 10 June 1923 – 5 November 1991) was a Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovak-born British media proprietor, politician and fraudster. After escaping the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, ...

. He was sued for libel by Maxwell but won the case, winning record damages for a litigant in person by counterclaim. In 1996 Allason sued

Alastair Campbell Alastair John Campbell (born 25 May 1957) is a British journalist, author, strategist, broadcaster, and activist, who is known for his political roles during Tony Blair's leadership of the Labour Party. Campbell worked as Blair's spokesman an ...

for malicious falsehood with regard to an article printed in the ''

Daily Mirror The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily Tabloid journalism, tabloid newspaper. Founded in 1903, it is part of Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), which is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the tit ...

'' in November 1992. The case was heard by Mr Justice Drake, without a jury. The judge ruled that Allason had failed to demonstrate that the ''Daily Mirror'' article, although inaccurate, had caused him any financial loss. In a retrial in 1998, he was awarded £1,050 in damages and 75% of his legal costs. In 1998, Allason lost a libel action – his 18th – against the authors and publishers of the ''

Have I Got News for You ''Have I Got News for You'' (''HIGNFY'') is a British television panel show, produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC, which premiered on 28 September 1990. The programme focuses on two teams, one usually captained by Ian Hislop and one ...

'' 1997 diary for referring to him as "a conniving little shit". In 2001, Allason sued

Random House Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...

, the publishers of ''The Enigma Spy'', the autobiography of the former Soviet agent

John Cairncross John Cairncross (25 July 1913 – 8 October 1995) was a British civil servant who became an intelligence officer and spy during the Second World War. As a Soviet double agent, he passed to the Soviet Union the raw Tunny decryptions that may h ...

. Allason claimed he had ghostwritten ''The Enigma Spy'' in return for the copyright and 50 per cent of the proceeds. However, Allason lost the case and was ordered to pay costs of around £200,000. The trial judge, Mr Justice Laddie, described him as "one of the most dishonest witnesses I have ever seen".

Honours and awards

Allason is the recipient of the US Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO)'s Lifetime Literature Achievement Award, and in 2011 he was elected to the Honorary Board of that association. He is the European Editor of the ''World Intelligence Review'', published in

Personal life

In 1979 Allason married Nikki van Moppes. They divorced in 1996. The couple have two children. In 2012, he married violinist Nicola Loud.

Publications

*''Spy!'' (by Richard Deacon with Nigel West), London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1980 *''MI5: British Security Service Operations, 1909–1945'', New York: Stein and Day, 1982, 1981 *''A Matter of Trust: MI5, 1945–72'', London:

Weidenfeld & Nicolson Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (established 1949), often shortened to W&N or Weidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It has been a division of the French-owned Orion Publishing Group since 1991. History George Weidenfeld ...

, 1982; published in the U.S. as ''The Circus: MI5, Operations 1945–1972'', New York : Stein and Day, 1983 *''MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations: 1909–45'', London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983 *''Unreliable Witness: Espionage Myths of the Second World War'', London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984 *''The Branch: A History of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch'' (By Rupert Allason) *''Operation Garbo: The Personal Story of the Most Successful Double Agent of World War II'', co-written by Juan Pujol and Nigel West, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985 *''GCHQ: The Secret Wireless War, 1900–86'', London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986, *''Molehunt: The Full Story of the Soviet Spy in MI5'', London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987 *''The Friends: Britain's Post-War Secret Intelligence operations'', London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988 *''Games of Intelligence: The Classified Conflict of International Espionage'', London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989 *''The Blue List'' (novel), London: Secker & Warburg, 1989, *''Cuban Bluff'' (novel), London: Secker & Warburg, 1990 *''Seven Spies Who Changed the World'', London: Secker & Warburg, 1991 *''Secret War: The Story of SOE, Britain's Wartime Sabotage Organisation'', London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992 *''Murder in the Commons'' (novel), London: 1992 *''The Faber Book of Espionage'': Faber & Faber, December 1994 *''Murder in the Lords'' (novel), London: 1994 *''The Secret War for the Falklands: SAS, MI6 and the War Whitehall Nearly Lost'': Little Brown, January 1997, *Introduction to ''British Security Co-ordination: British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-45'': Little Brown, 1998 *''The Faber Book of Treachery'': Faber & Faber, March 1998 *''The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets Exposed by the KGB Archives'', London: HarperCollins, 1999, 1998 *''Counterfeit Spies'': Time Warner Paperbacks, March 1999 *''VENONA: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War'': HarperCollins, May 2000 *''The Third Secret: The CIA, Solidarity and the KGB's Plot to Kill the Pope'': HarperCollins, October 2000 *''Mortal Crimes: The Greatest Theft in History: Soviet Penetration of the Manhattan Project'', New York: Enigma Books, 2004 *''The Guy Liddell Diaries: 1939–1942 Volume 1'': Frank Cass Publishers, February 2005 *''The Guy Liddell Diaries: 1942–1945 Volume 2'': Routledge, London, June 2005 *''Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence'': Scarecrow Press, London, June 2005 *''Mask: MI5's Penetration of the Communist Party of Great Britain'': Frank Cass Publishers, July 2005 *''On Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Chiefs of Britain's Intelligence Agency, MI6'': Greenhill Books, London October 2006 * *
Classified! The Adventures of a Molehunter
': Biteback Publishing, London, February 2024

References

External links

Nigel West

Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies

Association of Former Intelligence Officers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Allason, Rupert 1951 births Living people British historians English people of Irish descent Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies People educated at Farleigh School People educated at Downside School UK MPs 1987–1992 UK MPs 1992–1997 British historians of espionage British Eurosceptics