The Guy Liddell Diaries, Volume I: 1939-1942: 1939-1942: MI5's Director of Counter-Espionage in World War II

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But Liddell wanted something more formal, to build on MI5's success in helping the FBI round up an important German spy ring operating in the USA which had been communicating with Germany through a Mrs Jessie Jordan in Perth, Scotland. On 14th May, 1938, Glading, Albert Williams and George Whomack were convicted under the Official Secrets Act. His latest work, Cold War Spymaster, subtitled The Legacy of Guy Liddell, Deputy Director of MI5, is a puzzling creation, as I shall soon explain. She was surprised to find herself growing to like these Bolsheviks of whom she had heard such hair-raising things.

Though the protagonist's name is never mentioned, in the novel The Last Temptation by David Mure, the character is clearly Liddell, as the character's history follows Liddell's exactly. Liddell soldiered on under Sillitoe, barely able to contain his bitterness, only to fall foul of the Burgess/Maclean scandal in 1951.In 1919 Liddell joined Scotland Yard as a subordinate to Basil Thompson in the directorate of intelligence. It took me a while to get through this: mostly the extended day and as consequence the additional hours in the garden, so come late evening the eyelids were drooping. Though the Service knew that all were innocent, it was not until August 1982 that, thanks to intelligence from Oleg Gordievsky, it finally identified John Cairncross as the Fifth Man in the Ring of Five. No other member of the Security Service is known to have maintained a diary and the twelve volumes of this journal represents a unique record of the events and personalities of the period, a veritable tour d’horizon of the entire subject. In 1902, aged 32 – already with over 17 years professional engineering and management experience – he volunteered for the Royal Engineers and was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant.

These diary entries, we are told, were dictated to his assistant (a jolly loyal assistant, I must believe) at the end of the working day. Guy Maynard Liddell, CB, CBE, MC (8 November 1892 – 3 December 1958) was a British intelligence officer. Between 1879 and 1884 Guy was educated at the Royal Naval Academy, Southsea, the Institution Aubert Savary, Paris, and finally for a year at Clifton College, Bristol.

However, Ellen Wilkinson, who served under Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, had heard rumours from Europe that Liddell was suspected of being a double-agent. Rees also claimed that Blunt, Guy Liddell, a former MI6 officer named Robert Zaehner, and Stuart Hampshire, a brilliant RSS officer, were all fellow accomplices. Although the document was not recovered, more than enough evidence was found of Soviet espionage, which was enhanced by the unexpected defection of a terrified code clerk, Anton Miller, who had been detained while attempting to burn incriminating files.