A Secret Well Kept Read online

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  By Caroline Coverdale, great-granddaughter of Sir Vernon and Lady Kell

  Introduction

  By Stewart Binns, author and filmmaker

  Chapter 1Moscow

  Chapter 2Journey Through Canada

  Chapter 3Japan

  Chapter 4Shanghai and Active Service

  Chapter 5Boxer Rebellion

  Chapter 6Relief of Peking

  Chapter 7Tientsin

  Chapter 8Visit to Tangshan

  Chapter 9Railway Staff Officer at Shan-Hai-Kuan

  Chapter 10We Make Friends

  Chapter 11A Distinguished Visitor

  Chapter 12Shan-Hai-Kuan Reverts to Chinese Control

  Chapter 13Peking

  Chapter 14Farewell

  Chapter 15Trans-Siberian Journey

  Chapter 16Home Again

  Chapter 17New Plans

  Chapter 18Some Fruition

  Chapter 19War

  Chapter 20Air Raids

  Chapter 21Return to London

  Chapter 22War Ending

  Chapter 23Steps Back to Normal

  Chapter 24Visit to South Africa

  Chapter 25George VI Comes to the Throne

  Chapter 26Preparation for a Second World War

  Chapter 27Resignation from MI5

  Notes

  By Dr Chris Northcott, author and lecturer in Intelligence and Security Studies

  Acknowledgements

  Plate Section

  FOREWORD

  Recently, I made a fascinating discovery. Hidden away with a number of beautiful old photo albums lay an enchanting manuscript. It was written by my great-grandmother, about her life with her husband, Sir Vernon Kell. As soon as I started reading it, I became engrossed in their world and thought how wonderful it would be to share their remarkable story with others. In fact, I soon discovered that this had also been Lady Kell’s wish.

  I love her style of writing, her courage and tenacity. Her devotion to her husband is so deep and pure. She talks so fondly of Sir Vernon throughout the book, and emphasises how much he achieved for our country during two world wars, giving him the credit he so rightly deserves.

  One example of Lady Kell’s courage is highlighted in a newspaper article from the Evening Standard of 3 April 1961. She was only 20 years old when she married Vernon and travelled to China for their honeymoon. ‘We’d only been there two weeks when the Boxer Revolt broke. My husband was recalled to the Army and I was left in the settlement with all those guns trained on our house. It was rather alarming.’

  Sadly, I never had the privilege of meeting my great-grandmother. However, I now feel I’ve had the chance to get to know her by reading her manuscript and letters and hearing so many wonderful stories from her children and grandchildren.

  When Sir Vernon died, Lady Kell wrote an extremely touching letter to one of her sons. She explained: ‘My life’s work seems to have been taken from me for I lived largely for him. Now I am trying to love him more grandly by getting to understand that the body is only a “seeming”, not the REAL of us and that there should be no separation if I can forget myself and think only of him. He must be needed elsewhere, all his wonderful qualities of leadership, courage, insight, sympathy and understanding of the qualities of all and everyone who came in touch with him, must make him the instrument ready to God’s own hand, to fashion him for some loving work.’

  Her granddaughters Caroline and Bridget, daughters of her youngest son, John, were incredibly close to their grandmother and seemed to have spent the most amount of time with her over the years. ‘When I think about Granny,’ Bridget recalls, ‘although we remained close until her death, I remember especially the times I spent with her as a child: the many “treats” at Harrods, uniform buying and many other adventures. But most of all I remember her kindness and tolerance, her light-hearted way of dealing with us and our childish views and her efforts to turn my sister, Caroline, and me, in an ever-changing world into “young ladies”. How she laughed at our expressions of horror and disgust as we tried her breakfast yoghurt – a definite novelty in those days. But I also realised, perhaps subconsciously, that she possessed a deep faith and although she never tried to force her beliefs onto us, they nonetheless influenced me for the good.’

  ‘My first memories of Granny Con,’ Caroline fondly adds, ‘go back to 1946 when, just after the war, she used to meet me from the school train at Paddington every holidays, keep me happy for a couple of days and then send me on to my parents in Germany (complete with school trunk). Quite an undertaking! I remember her as tiny but indomitable, not particularly strict, but she did admonish me for sitting in an un-ladylike way with my legs apart! She had a special way of kissing with her eyelashes – a “butterfly” kiss. Her skin was very soft and she had a rather naughty chuckle.’

  Virginia, John’s third daughter, also reminisces about her times with her grandmother. ‘My younger sister Charlotte and I were occasionally taken to London for the day, mainly to shop for school-uniform items. The highlight of the day would be lunch with Granny Con. As children, this always felt like a rather formal occasion, as Granny and her sister Vera would appear for lunch wearing hats. Lunch itself would be cranked up from the kitchen below in a dumb waiter by the Irish cook, who lived in the basement with her parrot! Granny Con was, however, despite her rather formal appearance, a soft and kind person. She would chat easily with us and take an interest in what we were doing and what we enjoyed. On our first visit we told her politely how delicious the jelly was and we then got jelly for pudding on every future visit. Looking back on her life, she was obviously an amazing lady and a very strong support to my grandfather throughout their life together. She has left me with many special childhood memories.’

  Phillida, daughter of Lady Kell’s daughter Margaret, adored her grandmother. She remembers: ‘Having come from Scotland, I loved staying in London with my wonderful grandmother who I looked up to and respected. She was such a fun person, who had a great sense of humour, and what a wit! She was always there for us. I often feel she is still around me.’

  ‘What I do remember about Granny Con,’ Jamie, Margaret’s son, recalls, ‘was that she was great at keeping the family together and in touch, as staying with her at 67 Evelyn Gardens was always fun, and a good meeting point for other members of the family. She helped me enormously when I was trying to sort myself out as a teenager. She was a good listener and always gave good and wise advice, usually offered over a delicious cup of tea. The drawing room was ideal for this as one could escape to the garden afterwards for some exercise, and later Mrs Carney, the cook, together with the parrot, were downstairs ready to dispense an Irish joke or two.’

  My own mother, Suzan, daughter of Lady Kell’s eldest son James, also had a very strong connection with her grandmother. ‘My first encounter with Granny Con was when I was six and my mother and I went to stay with her at 67 Evelyn Gardens. Granny had a rather “no-nonsense” approach and I learned to admire and respect her as I grew older. She obviously saw it as her mission to turn all her granddaughters into young ladies. “Can’t you strap them in dear?” I remember her pleading as we waited in Piccadilly to meet my father! I stayed with her a lot in my teens, and became more closely connected with her beliefs and ideas. Granny was a Christian Scientist (a view that I did not exactly share) but she introduced me to a Doctor of Metaphysics, and years later I became one myself. Granny had great strength, drive and determination. The fact that she was very small in stature did in no way diminish her strong personality. She loved music, the arts and a colourful garden, and I truly loved to spend time with her whenever the opportunity arose.’

  Understandably, our family holds Lady Kell in high esteem, and have great respect and admiration for her and her husband. But it’s also clear that it’s not just the family who holds such strong views and are aware of Sir Vernon’s great qualities. In the days following his death, letters flooded in.

  Lady Kell wrote to her son, James, explaining: ‘The letters I have already got are really marvellous and saying the same of him. His brilliant and able accomplishment of his great work and leadership of a unique kind, knitting everyone together under his direction with that understanding and sympathetic touch, unfailing help, patience and quick grasp of events. A quite unusual foresight. A gift of friendship that all from the lowest to the highest felt enthused by and felt the wish to give of their best for whatever work was set for them. Many letters say, a great man who has done great things for his country and who, by the nature of the things he achieved, could only be inadequately recognised. He made his country secure in the last war and made it possible for it to be so again in this, said another letter. I feel that the letters show that not only was he great in the achievement of his aim in his career but also in his personal life among men. For all have recognised the greatness, goodness and strength in his character in quite an unusual degree. It is seldom that both the public and personal achievement of that sort is reached in one person.’

  Sir Vernon’s photo sits proudly on our mantlepiece at home, a constant reminder of an extraordinary man. His decency, values, morals and kindness, patience and passion for making our world a safer place, are among the many qualities my great-grandfather possessed. I see now that his wife also possessed these attributes. Together they must have made quite a team.

  A Secret Well Kept took Lady Kell nearly seven years to write. It is an inspiring tale of their life together, and gives us an insight into t
he private life of the man who founded MI5 and was its leader for over 30 years. I hope you also find it an inspiring read.

  Caroline Coverdale

  Great-granddaughter of Sir Vernon and Lady Kell

  INTRODUCTION

  For as long as humankind has waged war, informers, infiltrators and spies have brought their skills to bear to influence the outcome of the conflict. Espionage is certainly an ancient occupation. Brave, foolhardy, greedy or idealistic, spies have forged a unique place in history and have often made the difference between victory and defeat. Sun Tzu, the Chinese philosopher and military strategist, wrote in The Art of War, 2,500 years ago: ‘What enables an intelligent government and a wise military leadership to overcome others and achieve extraordinary accomplishments is foreknowledge.’

  The Roman emperor Hadrian organised the Empire’s Frumentarii – its wheat collectors – into an empire-wide intelligence-gathering organisation. He used them to spy on everyone in his huge domain, including his wife, family and friends.

  Sir Francis Walsingham was one of Britain’s most famous spies. An Elizabethan statesman and diplomat, Walsingham was a principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I from 1573 until his death in 1590. Using all the techniques of the grand spymaster – double agents, secret codes and code-breaking, agents provocateurs and covert propaganda and disinformation – he was able to protect the Queen from those who would do her harm at home and challenge her from overseas. He was instrumental in bringing about the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and in defeating the Spanish Armada.

  The subject of this book, Vernon George Waldegrave Kell, stepped into the murky world of intrigue and deception in the early days of the 20th century. The son of an army officer, he was born in 1873 in Great Yarmouth. His mother was the daughter of a Polish émigré, Count Konarski, a decorated Polish Army surgeon. Kell’s destiny seemed to be a career in the army. He graduated from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and was commissioned into the South Staffordshire Regiment in October 1894. A man of many gifts, courteous and charming, perhaps his greatest asset was his ability as a linguist. He spoke French, German, Italian and Polish and, through his extensive travels in the later years of the 1890s, soon acquired Chinese and Russian.

  While in China, he was involved in the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1900) and worked for army intelligence in Tientsin, as well as acting as a foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. An officer of obvious talents, he was promoted to captain in 1901. In 1902, he returned to London and began working at the War Office analysing German intelligence. This was to be a watershed for Kell.

  The British Army had continued to undertake military intelligence operations since Elizabethan times. By the 19th century, they were organised under the umbrella of the Directorate of Military Intelligence. Its focus was intelligence about the military strengths and capabilities of enemies – or potential enemies – particularly during military conflicts.

  Following criticisms of intelligence gathering before and during the Boer War, Britain’s military intelligence structures began to be overhauled and its manpower increased. In 1904, the service in which Kell now worked was re-organised under a Director of Military Operations, James Grierson – a former military attaché in Berlin and veteran of the Boxer Rebellion and Boer War. He commanded four sections: MO1 – Strategy; MO2 – Foreign Intelligence (with eight country sub-sections, A to H); MO3 – Administration and Special Duties; MO4 – Topographical.

  This was the environment where Kell applied his various talents, learned the nuances of intelligence gathering and encountered the many eccentric characters who occupied the bizarre world of espionage.

  Apart from army and naval intelligence, there was also another ingredient in the intelligence ‘mix’ at the turn of the 20th century. The Metropolitan Police Special Branch had been formed in 1883 to counter the threat of Fenian (Irish Republican Brotherhood) terrorism. The Superintendent of Special Branch from 1893 was a mercurial Irishman from County Kerry, William Melville. Melville made a name for himself chasing anarchists and subversives, and for his role protecting British and foreign royalty.

  Melville resigned as Superintendent of Special Branch in 1903. Upon his departure, he was called the ‘most celebrated detective of the day’ by The Times and was made a Member of the Royal Victorian Order in recognition of his role in protecting the royal family over many years. Melville was presented with a gold watch and chain by Kaiser Wilhelm II, for protecting him during various visits to Britain.

  However, in a secret move known only to a few, Melville did not retire to the country but joined MO3 at the War Office, where he was to play a key role in Vernon Kell’s story. Operating out of a nondescript office in Westminster and under the alias of ‘W Morgan, General Agent’, for the next six years Melville prepared the ground for Vernon Kell’s new role and organisation. He wined and dined Europe’s leading spymasters such as Gustav Steinhauer, a man known as ‘The Kaiser’s Master Spy’ who had been trained by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Chicago, and Pyotr Rachkovsky, the head of Okhrana, the Tsar of Russia’s security service.

  Melville would take Steinhauer to dinner at Simpson’s Grand Cigar Divan in the Strand, where they would drink heavily and smoke the finest cigars. Whenever Rachkovsky came to London, he was accompanied by several of his officers and took a suite of rooms at the Savoy. These were the kind of men – friends and foes alike – who were to be the models for the myths and realities of the modern-day spy, and the men Vernon Kell would have to use all his guile to control.

  By 1907, Melville was operating almost alone and on the outer fringes of the War Office, and his warnings about the growing threat from German espionage were largely ignored. However, circumstances began to change. Britain’s power in the world and the security of its borders rested almost entirely on the overwhelming strength of the Royal Navy. Through Britain’s network of spies, it became clear that the Kaiser had dreams for a German empire to match those of France and Britain, and that he had grand designs for his German High Seas Fleet. It was increasingly apparent that he intended to re-equip his navy such that it would be a serious threat to the supremacy of the Royal Navy.

  Author and journalist William Le Queux had published his anti-German invasion fantasy, The Invasion of 1910, in 1906. It sold over a million copies and was given even greater circulation when it was serialised by Lord Northcliffe’s Daily Mail. Details of the German invasion route were given prominence and sounded alarm bells across the English shires. The Mail added 80,000 to its circulation. Le Queux became a celebrity, and began to style himself as a secret agent and spy-catcher, and surrounded himself with a few like-minded men in his own voluntary Secret Service Department.

  By the autumn of 1907, several politicians had begun to respond to the growing unease. For the first time, it became clear to several influential figures that the particular ‘intelligence’ focus of the army and navy on military materiel and capabilities was not broad enough in an ever more sophisticated world of rapid travel by ship and train, and ever-advancing forms of communication by telegraph and telephone. Similarly, it was obvious that, with a small number of exceptions such as William Melville, the police did not have the skills or the intellect to cope with the dark arts of espionage.

  In other words: spies were becoming more shadowy and operating in darker corners, and a new breed of counter-intelligence operatives had to be recruited to find and defeat them.

  With Cabinet approval, Richard Haldane, Secretary of State for War in Asquith’s Liberal Government, set up and chaired a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence in March 1909, to consider ‘the nature and extent of foreign espionage that is at present taking place within the country and the danger to which it may expose us’.

  Much of the evidence to the sub-committee was presented by Major James Edmonds, the head of a new section of the Directorate of Military Operations, MO5 – responsible for Special Operations. Another remarkable figure, Edmonds was an experienced intelligence officer and regarded as the leading military intellectual of his generation. He was admitted into Sandhurst with the best marks the examiners could remember, passed out first in his year and first at Staff College. He was gazetted to the Royal Engineers, where his talents led to him being nicknamed Archimedes. A gifted linguist fluent in German, as a small boy living in France in 1870–1871 he had witnessed the advance of the German Army during the Franco-Prussian War. This had a profound effect on him, and he became preoccupied with the strengths and tactics of the German military machine.