Recently, there has been some controversy regarding a suggestion for a blue plaque for Admiral Sir Hugh Francis Paget Sinclair (1873-1939). However, English Heritage apparently ruled that he was not ‘historically significant’ enough to be recognised with a blue plaque at his official London residence in Queen Anne’s Gate, which was linked by a secret tunnel to MI6 HQ. If you’ve been reading the news over the last few months, you’ll be aware that certain individuals in English Heritage have lost the plot, and this could be construed as another example of their arrant political correctness.
Sinclair certainly achieved a lot.
He joined the Royal Navy aged 13 and entered the Naval Intelligence Division at
the outset of the First World War. By 1919 he had become the Director of Naval
Intelligence. In 1923, he took over from Sir Mansfield Cumming as the director
of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, aka MI6).
As early as 1919 he was concerned
about the influence of Bolshevism, but in the main his concerns were ignored.
By 1936 he discovered that the Gestapo had infiltrated several SIS stations; at
about this time Lieutenant Colonel Sir
Claude Edward Marjoribanks Dansey set up Z Organisation, intent on working
independently from the compromised SIS.
Sinclair was asked in
December 1938 to prepare a dossier on Adolf Hitler, for the attention of the
Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister. The dossier received short shrift as it was believed
that it did not gel with Britain's policy of appeasement. Sinclair had described
Hitler as possessing the characteristics of ‘fanaticism, mysticism,
ruthlessness, cunning, vanity, moods of exaltation and depression, fits of
bitter and self-righteous resentment; and what can only be termed a streak of
madness; but with it all there is a great tenacity of purpose, which has often
been combined with extraordinary clarity of vision’ (Foreign Office files)
In 1938, with war looming, Sinclair
set up Section D, dedicated to sabotage and in the spring of
1938, using £6,000 of his own money, he bought Bletchley Park
to be a wartime intelligence station. He died of cancer in 1939 so did not see
the fruits of the code-breaking group at Bletchley that shortened the war.
When writing my first Tana Standish
novel, Mission: Prague, one of my
characters, the head of International Enterprises (‘Interprises’), an adjunct
of SIS, was loosely based on both Sinclair and Dansey: Sir Gerald Hazzard, born
1909. His entry in Who’s who reads:
Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford; Recreations, yacht-racing, crosswords
and chess; ‘attached to Foreign Office, 1939-present’ which is polite British
jargon for working in the SIS [the ‘present’ was 1975-1978]. However, his
physical stature was based on my first civilian boss after leaving school…
Hazzard’s recruitment of psychic
Tana Standish is related in Mission:
Prague:
England, 1965
“Tread
carefully,”
was Sir Gerald’s high-pitched warning to her as she boarded the train
at Waterloo ten years ago, destined for the Fort, one of MI6’s training establishments, an old Napoleonic
stone-walled edifice on the Gosport peninsula on the south coast of Hampshire.
Standing beside the middle-aged yet cadaverous man had
been her grey-haired mother, bravely trying to fight back tears.
“Mum, I’m a big girl now, you
know?”
Tana said.
“Twenty-eight last May, dear, I know.” Her mother smiled back. “But I’m worried about what Gerald’s letting you get into. It’s dangerous.”
“She’ll be all right,
Vera, my dear,”
Sir Gerald piped. “In fact, I actually pity the instructors!”
The totally inappropriate falsetto voice of Sir Gerald
had taken some getting used to, as had his emaciated appearance. There seemed
to be little flesh on his face. Tana had seen survivors from the concentration
camps and the facial features of the majority had been drawn, almost
corpse-like, the skull’s bone structure
clearly visible. She knew for a fact that Sir Gerald dined well and often, yet
his head and, judging by how his clothes hung on his gaunt frame, his body too
closely resembled some unfortunate who had endured a Nazi death-camp.
Sir Gerald had been like an uncle to her since Hugh
Standish died in her childhood yet, officially, he only came into her life when
she was twenty-eight, ostensibly to recruit her into his fledgling
organisation, ‘Interprises’.
Ten years ago. When she’d qualified for the Intelligence Officers’ New Entry Course.
The day had been bleak and wind-swept as she hurried
from the draughty Portsmouth Harbour railway station to the pontoon where she
caught the little steam craft Ferry Prince, which seemed to be overloaded
with commuters, among them Royal Navy sailors in square rig hanging onto their
white hats. Halfway across the harbour, she saw one sailor lose his hat
overboard and the young man swore, no doubt fearing that he’d be on a charge when he turned up at his submarine
base, HMS Dolphin. Away on their left, she noticed the distinctive
ten-storey tall tower, rumoured to have been built by German prisoners-of-war.
Below it were the motley brick buildings of Fort Blockhouse, the submarine
base, with two menacing black boats moored alongside.
On the Gosport side she’d been met by a Ministry of Defence driver in dark serge who had
commented disparagingly on the weather then bundled her suitcase into the back
of the highly-polished Rover.
The journey seemed circuitous – the driver explained that there was a crossing called
Pneumonia Bridge over the creek but it was only capable of taking pedestrians
and cyclists, not cars. “One day they might
get round to building a proper road, I suppose,” he moaned, “but
it’ll be after I’m
drawing my pension, I shouldn’t wonder!”
Eventually, they turned onto Anglesey Road, part of
the district of Alverstoke where many retired admirals were supposed to live,
and this led down to the coast road and Stokes Bay, which offered a sweeping panoramic
view of the Solent and the Isle of Wight.
Turning left, they passed several fenced-off military
establishments.
Further along still, beyond the narrow hedge-bordered
coast road, she knew, were the high brick walls of the submarine base and the Royal
Navy’s Hospital Haslar. However, after a short drive
they turned off to the right onto what appeared to be an unadopted road with a
sign on their left indicating,
GOVERNMENT PROPERTY.
FORT MONCKTON ONLY.
NO UNAUTHORISED VEHICLES
BEYOND THIS POINT.
They passed this and the 15 mph sign and headed
towards an unprepossessing collection of brick buildings partially concealed by
an overgrowth of brambles and weeds, all behind barbed wire.
Their car crossed over a drawbridge and it seemed they
were expected as Fort Monckton’s ponderous studded
steel doors swung wide on well-oiled rails and hinges.
***
I lived in Alverstoke for many years and often passed the secret Fort Monckton...
Then, in the sequel, Mission: Tehran, we learn more about
Hazzard’s acquisition of the British SIS psychic HQ, Fenner House, motivated in
part by the logic of Dansey:
The Georgian mansion was built in 1810 and had a
chequered existence before being bought by Sir Gerald Hazzard in 1958 to
establish the Psychic Institute. As a top intelligence officer in the MI6 hierarchy,
he was following in the footsteps of two chiefs of the secret service –
Mansfield Cumming, who often supplemented the fledgling secret service from his
own pocket, and Admiral Sinclair, who bought Bletchley Park himself because he
couldn’t get any funding.
Unofficially Sir Gerald had been interested in psychic
research since encountering Tana as a child. However, abiding by Vera
Standish’s wishes, he didn’t officially announce his friendship and interest
until 1965.
Two years earlier ‘C’ had been Dick White and with his
connivance, Sir Gerald had created his own particular offshoot of MI6,
International Enterprises, in February, shortly after Philby flew out of Beirut
for exile in Moscow. In July 1963 Sir Gerald actually set Fenner House aside for
the sole use of Interprises, retaining the Psychic Institute as a convenient
cover. His brief was to recruit agents who didn’t belong to any ‘old school’ –
and he scoured the armed forces to that end. Inevitably, there were exceptions
and he head-hunted Tana in 1965.
Changes to the interior structure of Fenner House were
kept secret: the large bedroom at the west rear end was converted into a
conference room and encased in a Faraday cage to prevent electronic
eavesdropping. The upstairs closets and changing rooms on the north side had
been converted into two separate rooms – the psychic training laboratory and
the Communications Centre and a door from the latter opened into Sir Gerald’s
bed-sitting room at the northeast corner which he occupied whenever he was
visiting.
The servants’ quarters on the ground floor at the
north side were knocked into two rooms – becoming the Gym – with its first-aid
annex – and the Armoury.
***
Sitting cross-legged in the centre of the Gymnasium’s
dojo, Tana maintained the yogic Sukhasana position, her arms limp and the backs
of her hands resting on her bare feet. She wore a black leotard and her hair
swept back in a tight bun.
This easy pose for meditation was suitable for her
purposes. (Mission: Tehran, pp
178-179)
***
Mission:
Prague
Available on Amazon as a paperback
and e-book here
Mission:
Tehran
Available on Amazon as a paperback
and e-book here
Mission:
Khyber
Available on Amazon as a paperback
and e-book here
