Tim Tate - Hitler’s British Traitors: The Secret History of Spies, Saboteurs and Fifth Columnists

Jessie Jordan, Scottish hairdresser and centre of a pre-war Nazi espionage network.

Edwin Heath, a conman who sold British military secrets to the Germans.

Donald Adams, a journalist and racing tipster who spied for the German Secret Service.

Serocold Skeels, who was jailed for four years for conspiring to assist the enemy.

Oliver Conway Gilbert, interned for communicating with German and Japanese spies.

Admiral Sir Barry Domvile, interned for disseminating Nazi propaganda.

The 12th Duke of Bedford, a fascist who tried to negotiate peace terms with Germany.

Lord Sempill, who sold military secrets to Japanese Intelligence for more than fifteen years.

Anthony Ludovici, a leading conservative intellectual and friend of Nazi leaders.

Captain Archibald Ramsay, Conservative MP, fascist and founder of The Right Club.

Anna Wolkoff, who was jailed for sending British military secrets to Nazi Germany.

Tyler Kent, a cipher clerk at the US Embassy who smuggled British military secrets to Berlin.

John Beckett, a fascist who was interned for planning a revolutionary coup dtat.

Leigh Vaughan-Henry, interned for leading a highly-organised plot for an armed coup dtat.

Molly Hiscox and Norah Briscoe, fascists caught in an undercover MI5 sting operation.

George Johnson Armstrong, the first British man to be hanged for treachery during the war.

Dorothy OGrady, condemned to death for treachery, though her sentence was commuted.

Duncan Scott-Ford, convicted of treachery and executed in November 1942.

Irma Stapleton, caught in an MI5 sting operation and jailed for ten years.

Hermann Simon, who set up a network of Fifth Column sub-agents for German Intelligence.

Josephine My Eriksson, a cook in aristocratic houses who led a double life as a Nazi spy.

Sir John Anderson, the Home Secretary responsible for internment policy.

Alexander Maxwell, Permanent Under Secretary at the Home Office, who clashed with MI5.

Norman Birkett, head of the Home Office Advisory Committee on internments.

Sir Vernon Kell, MI5s first Director, who was sacked on Churchills orders in June 1940.

Guy Liddell, Director of B Branch of MI5, the section responsible for counter-espionage.

Colonel William Hinchley-Cooke, MI5s most effective spycatcher for more than a decade.

Maxwell Knight, who ran a string of often amateurish undercover agents for MI5.

Joan Miller, whose memoirs offered revealing insights into Maxwell Knight and his agents.

John Bingham, who ran one of MI5s entrapment operations against Nazi sympathisers.

Victor Rothschild, who masterminded MI5s elaborate Jack King agent provocateur scheme.

Eric Roberts, the former bank clerk who became MI5s most successful undercover agent.

Eric Roberts Gestapo officers identity card in the name of Jack King, created by MI5.

Notting Hill, West London

On the evening of Tuesday, May 28, 1940, a succession of men and women rang the bell at No. 36 Stanley Crescent, a quiet, upmarket enclave of tall, stone-faced terraces just three miles to the north of Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. They arrived one at a time and, to an attentive observer, might have seemed a little furtive.

The visitors were met at the door by a softly-spoken middle-aged man sporting a monocle, who quickly escorted them inside. He, too, seemed nervous. Each new arrival was given elaborate instructions for escaping via a back exit in the event of a raid; each time the doorbell rang, those inside the elegant drawing room moved quickly into the gardens behind the house.

The guests were a curious mixture: representatives of Londons political class mixed with members of high society and a Japanese journalist-turned-spy. When the last visitor was ushered inside, their host began issuing orders which, as their Leader, he expected to be obeyed to the letter. This was to be their final gathering: from then on each man or woman would meet only within one of eighteen watertight cells: each had 25 members. Communication was to be limited and careful; members were to speak only with the two immediate contacts in their own cell. Phone calls were discouraged, but if unavoidable, passwords were to be used by both parties to the conversation.

The Leader told his followers that a network of safe houses had been prepared to accommodate cell members dependent wives and children; none was further than ten minutes travel from the various headquarters.

In the event of serious trouble, members were to make their way to a temporary rendezvous point outside London, from where they would be escorted out of the country to Ireland, via south Wales. This route had already been successfully tested: over the previous two weeks six people had separately used it to leave Britain without attracting the attention of the authorities.

Meanwhile, the Leader himself was working hard on the next stage of the plan: the infiltration of mainstream political parties. He warned his guests that if this met opposition or proved problematic, key individuals were either to be intimidated by threats against their wives and children or bumped off.

The Leader was Dr Leigh Francis Howell Wynne Sackville de Montmorency Vaughan-Henry. To the public he was known as a celebrated composer, music critic and author; he featured regularly on the wireless, had been director of music at the Theatre Institute in Florence and had conducted orchestral performances for the royal family.

To the British Security Service, MI5, however, Leigh Vaughan-Henry was better known as a diehard fascist and violent anti-Semite. It had been monitoring him and his organisation for five years and for good reason.

The followers he had gathered round him that evening were to be the vanguard of an imminent fascist revolution: a violent coup dtat to replace the British government and the King with an authoritarian pro-Nazi regime, just as soon as German troops landed in Britain.

These men and women were part of Hitlers British Fifth Column. And they were far from alone.