Kenneth Benton
Encyclopedia
Kenneth Benton, CMG
(1909–1999) was an English MI6
officer and diplomat from 1937-68.
Following retirement, Benton began a second career as writer of spy
and crime thrillers
.
.
, then chief of MI6. Benton quickly realised that his role in the Passport Control Office was in fact a cover for intelligence work for MI6.
After the Annexation of Austria
in 1938, Kenneth and Peggie (married in March of that year) were posted to Riga, he as acting vice consul; after the Soviet occupation of Latvia
two years later, he returned to England and after briefing at Bletchley Park
was subsequently posted to Madrid as head of MI6's Section V, dealing with intercepted intelligence traffic and identifying German spies travelling through Spain.
Benton's team identified 19 spies during his time in Madrid, including the Double Cross
agents TREASURE
, ARTIST, TRICYCLE
and GARBO.
was appointed head of the Iberian section, which dealt with both Spain and Portugal, and became Benton's boss. He later articulated the emotional effect of Philby's outing as a Soviet agent in 1963:
His sentiments were shared by his wife:
Benton's later career included a further posting to Madrid in 1953, then to London from 1956-62 as head of recruitment for SIS. He was subsequently posted to Lima
, Peru
and Rio de Janeiro
, Brazil
, as Deputy Director for Latin America (DDLA), and retired from the Service in 1968.
, then to Chichester, West Sussex
, Kenneth began a second career as a writer of spy
, crime thrillers
, and historical fiction
, drawing on his experiences as intelligence officer and diplomat, and his extensive travels. He became president of the Crime Writers Association in 1974-5, succeeding Dick Francis
.
expert Peter Craig.
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....
(1909–1999) was an English MI6
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
officer and diplomat from 1937-68.
Following retirement, Benton began a second career as writer of spy
Spy fiction
Spy fiction, literature concerning the forms of espionage, was a sub-genre derived from the novel during the nineteenth century, which then evolved into a discrete genre before the First World War , when governments established modern intelligence agencies in the early twentieth century...
and crime thrillers
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
.
Early life and education
Benton attended Wolverhampton School, and was first employed teaching French in an English prep school, then teaching English in Florence and Vienna. During this time, he earned a degree in French, German and Italian as an external student at London UniversityUniversity of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
.
1937-41: Recruitment to MI6 and first postings
In 1937, in Vienna, Benton was offered a job by Captain Thomas Kendrick, the British Passport Control Officer for Vienna, who he had met initially through his future wife, Peggie Lambert. He was subsequently interviewed by Maurice Jeffes and Admiral Hugh SinclairHugh Sinclair
Admiral Sir Hugh Francis Paget Sinclair KCB , nicknamed "Quex", was a British intelligence officer. Between 1919 and 1921, he was Director of British Naval Intelligence, and helped to set up the Secret Intelligence Service before the Second World War.-Career:Sinclair joined the Royal Navy in the...
, then chief of MI6. Benton quickly realised that his role in the Passport Control Office was in fact a cover for intelligence work for MI6.
- "I had expected to begin dealing with visas, but instead was brought in to one of the back rooms where Bill Holmes passed me a letter addressed to somebody with a Czech name in some street in Vienna and asked me to translate it. I opened the letter, called Bill, and said, 'Look, I can't do this; it is in Czech.' She said, 'Oh, I'm sorry; how stupid; hang on for a moment.' At the back of my desk there was a little open bottle of colourless liquid, with a brush, and she dipped the brush in the liquid, passed it over the whole of the front of the letter and to my amazed eyes red writing appeared at right angles to the Czech text and it was in German. Then she turned the letter over and did the same on the rear side, so that I had two sides of what was in fact a German report."
After the Annexation of Austria
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
in 1938, Kenneth and Peggie (married in March of that year) were posted to Riga, he as acting vice consul; after the Soviet occupation of Latvia
Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940
The Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940 refers, according to the European Court of Human Rights, the Government of Latvia, the State Department of the United States of America, and the European Union, to the military occupation of the Republic of Latvia by the Soviet Union ostensibly under the...
two years later, he returned to England and after briefing at Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
was subsequently posted to Madrid as head of MI6's Section V, dealing with intercepted intelligence traffic and identifying German spies travelling through Spain.
1941-43: Madrid
Benton reported technically to Hamilton Stokes, Head of the Madrid SIS Station, but because of the confidential nature of his decoding work, he was not allowed to discuss ISOS traffic. This situation created friction between the two men, and Benton was eventually appointed head of a separate station, named 'Iberia'. The cover that the Visa office provided allowed Benton and his wife to create a database of information on individuals leaving and entering Spain, which could be compiled with other intelligence reports to identify patterns.- "The card index, in the course of nearly three years when I was in charge, grew to fourteen feet in length and really appeared to have a life of its own, because it often produced information that we did not know it had. Into that card index went the names of visa applicants, lists of ship passengers, names of known agents, Abwehr officers, guests at hotels, passengers on air flights, passengers on trains, as well as individuals about whom we had received information from Head Office or locally."
Benton's team identified 19 spies during his time in Madrid, including the Double Cross
Double Cross System
The Double Cross System, or XX System, was a World War II anti-espionage and deception operation of the British military intelligence arm, MI5. Nazi agents in Britain - real and false - were captured, turned themselves in or simply announced themselves and were then used by the British to broadcast...
agents TREASURE
Nathalie Sergueiew
Nathalie Sergueiew was a female double agent working for MI5 during World War II under the codename TREASURE. She played a significant part in deceiving the Germans about the location of the D-Day landings....
, ARTIST, TRICYCLE
Dušan Popov
Dušan "Duško" Popov OBE was a double agent working for MI6 during World War II under the cryptonym Tricycle.-Origins of Tricycle:...
and GARBO.
- "what we wanted to do was to get them to England and turn them into double agents, not just to satisfy the Germans that they were getting a lot of spies into England, but of course for the great deception which was so effective in deceiving the Germans on D-Day [...] the great advantage of the ISOS double agents was that, as soon as the false messages had been sent to the German case officers, we knew by their reactions how they had been accepted, which was an enormous advantage."
Kim Philby
In 1941, Kim PhilbyKim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
was appointed head of the Iberian section, which dealt with both Spain and Portugal, and became Benton's boss. He later articulated the emotional effect of Philby's outing as a Soviet agent in 1963:
- "Philby betrayed us all [...] He had no loyalties, either to HMG or friends, or to the women he married. We had liked and admired him and were left feeling unclean."
His sentiments were shared by his wife:
- "Years later, when Philby made his escape to Moscow, Peggie and I were having a drink with Footman, who was looking shattered. 'I know', said Peggie. 'We could work out a plan to leak information to the NKVD showing that Philby was a triple-cross, that Nicholas Eliot's last meeting with him in Beirut had really been to brief him on how to make touch with our Embassy in Moscow. I'll bet they'd swallow the story, if we did it craftily.' 'But the NKVD would shoot him', protested David, shocked to the core. 'Yes', said Peggie happily, 'and serve him bloody right.'"
1943 onwards
Shortly after the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943, Kenneth and Peggie were posted to Rome; Kenneth had been appointed head of the MI6 station attached to the new British Embassy, which as a result of rationing and ongoing disruption in Italy, was only opened in July 1944.Benton's later career included a further posting to Madrid in 1953, then to London from 1956-62 as head of recruitment for SIS. He was subsequently posted to Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
, Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
and Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, as Deputy Director for Latin America (DDLA), and retired from the Service in 1968.
Post-MI6
Following retirement to Appledore, KentAppledore, Kent
Appledore is a village and civil parish in the Ashford District of Kent, England. The village centre is 12 miles south-west of Ashford town, and on the northern edge of the Romney Marsh The northerly part of this village is Appledore Heath....
, then to Chichester, West Sussex
Chichester
Chichester is a cathedral city in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, South-East England. It has a long history as a settlement; its Roman past and its subsequent importance in Anglo-Saxon times are only its beginnings...
, Kenneth began a second career as a writer of spy
Spy fiction
Spy fiction, literature concerning the forms of espionage, was a sub-genre derived from the novel during the nineteenth century, which then evolved into a discrete genre before the First World War , when governments established modern intelligence agencies in the early twentieth century...
, crime thrillers
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
, and historical fiction
Historical fiction
Historical fiction tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the principal characters tend to be fictional...
, drawing on his experiences as intelligence officer and diplomat, and his extensive travels. He became president of the Crime Writers Association in 1974-5, succeeding Dick Francis
Dick Francis
Richard Stanley "Dick" Francis CBE was an English jockey and crime writer, many of whose novels centre around horse racing.- Personal life :...
.
Fiction
Benton published 11 novels across several genres, two of which were published under the pseudonym James Kirton. Those perhaps closest to his experiences in MI6, "though avoiding anything which could compromise or damage his former Service" are the six titles featuring a recurring hero, the police advisor and Counter-terrorismCounter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism is the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt to prevent or in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.The tactic of terrorism is available to insurgents and governments...
expert Peter Craig.
External links
- www.craig-thrillers.com Information about Benton's spySpy fictionSpy fiction, literature concerning the forms of espionage, was a sub-genre derived from the novel during the nineteenth century, which then evolved into a discrete genre before the First World War , when governments established modern intelligence agencies in the early twentieth century...
and crimeCrime fictionCrime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
thrillers featuring police advisor Peter Craig, republished in KindleAmazon KindleThe Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 which uses wireless connectivity to enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media...
format - The Crime Writers' Association