by Nick Barratt
C. Andrew, The Defence of the Realm (Penguin, 2009)
C. Andrew and V. Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive (Penguin, 1999)
G. Antrobus, King’s Messenger 1918–1940 (Herbert Jenkins, 1941)
G. Bessedovsky, Revelations of a Soviet Diplomat (Williams & Norgate, 1931)
E. Deacon, With My Little Eye (Frederick Miller, 1982)
Prince Lichnowsky, My Mission to London, 1912–1914 (George H. Doran, 1918)
E. Draitser, Stalin’s Romeo Spy (Duckworth Overlook, 2011)
W. Duffy, A Time for Spies (Vanderbilt UP, 1999)
Viscount Grey, Twenty-Five Years 1892–1916 (Frederick A. Stokes, 1925)
K. Jeffrey, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service (Bloomsbury, 2010)
A. Mallinson, 1914: Fight the Good Fight Britain, the Army and the Coming of the FirstWorldWar (Bantam, 2013)
H. Nicholson, Peacemaking 1919 (Houghton Mifflin, 1933)
J. Tilley and S. Gaselee, The Foreign Office (Putnam, 1933)
R. C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941, (Norton & Company, 1992)
S. Twigge, E. Hampshire and G. Macklin, British Intelligence (The National Archives, 2008)
N. West and O. Tsarev, The Crown Jewels (Harper Collins, 1998)
V. Wheeler-Holohan, The History of the King’s Messengers (Grayson and Gray-son, 1935)
P. Wright, Spycatcher (Viking Penguin, 1987)
Primary sources
There are precious few family archives for Ernest Oldham. In fact, the first time many of his relatives even knew what he looked like was when his MI5 file was released, containing the two snapshots included in this book. When his parents died on the Isle of Wight, the house was cleared by the family but no material relating to Oldham was found to have survived. Ironically, given Oldham’s putative posting in the Diplomatic Service, his parents’ house was called ‘Rio’. Piecing together many of the family details has involved standard genealogical sources, many of which are available online from websites such as www.ancestry.co.uk, www.findmypast.co.uk and www.freebmd.org.uk – civil registration certificates, census returns, passenger lists, electoral lists and street directories.
The key primary sources for Oldham’s story can be found at The National Archives, Kew, hidden amongst the records of the Foreign Office. As stated in the text, most of the registered files produced by the Communications Department have been destroyed during the crucial period of Oldham’s activity. Instead, the four sequences of day books were explored (TNA series FO 1103) – over 100 files with infrequent glimpses of Oldham’s work or, towards the end, his absences. Equally, the main series of registered correspondence of the Foreign Office proved surprisingly fruitful, with additional references to Oldham’s summons to jury service, and the mysterious receipt of a package from Spain in the early 1920s, located but not included in the main story. A summary of his career can be found in the annual Foreign Office Lists.
If anything, the intelligence records provide far more detail, given the files that were kept by MI5 on Soviet agents including Oldham. Most of these are also at The National Archives in series KV 2, with background information about MI5 in KV 4. Much material remains unreleased, as Andrew’s authorised account of MI5 makes clear; and virtually nothing has appeared in the public domain from the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).
Oldham’s military history was compiled from his service record, supported by extracts from the unit war diaries. These are also held at The National Archives, along with many more resources for tracing the movements of combatants during the terrible war that tore apart so many lives.
From the Soviet side, the KGB files were inaccessible – hence the reliance on the works cited above. However, much material was deposited in the Churchill Archives, Cambridge, by Soviet defector Vasili Mitrokhin who had painstakingly made copies of intelligence reports that passed through his hands. Even now, Russian interest in the Mitrokhin archive continues, with two ‘journalists’ taking extensive pictures of the material in the Churchill College archives during the autumn of 2014; rather ironically, given Oldham’s sartorial preference, both were dressed in brown suits.
ENDNOTES
1 Author’s personal email correspondence with Michael Barratt
2 Ibid
3 Jenny Keating, History in Education Project, Institute of Historical Research, University of London (December, 2010) p.1
4 From oral family history gathered together by Michael Barratt
5 Keating, p.3
6 TNA ref. CSC 10/3635
7 J Tilley & S Gaselee, The Foreign Office (London, 1933) p.154
8 Ibid pp.167–168
9 Ibid p.168
10 G Antrobus, King’s Messenger 1918–1940 Memoirs of a Silver Greyhound (London, 1941) pp.115–116
11 V Wheeler-Holohan, The History of the King’s Messengers (London, 1935) pp.viii–ix
12 Antrobus p.94
13 Ibid p.19
14 Ibid p.200
15 Ibid p.202
16 Tilley, Gaselee p.172
17 Ibid pp.172–173
18 Correspondence respecting the European Crisis (HMSO, 1914) no.5 p.9
19 Ibid, no.10 p.12
20 Prince Lichnowsky, My Mission to London, 1912–1914 (New York, 1918) p.34
21 Viscount Grey, Twenty-Five Years, 1892–1916 (New York, 1925) p.20
22 Tilley, Gaselee p.174
23 A Mallinson, 1914: Fight the Good Fight Britain, the Army and the Coming of the First World
War (London, 2013) p.6
24 The Times, 5 August 1914
25 Ibid
26 Lord Derby’s speech to the men of Liverpool, 28 August 1914
27 Wheeler-Holohan p.106
28 Ibid p.112
29 Tilley, Gaselee pp.180–181
30 Ibid p.181
31 TNA ref. WO 339/112210
32 Tilley, Gaselee p.173
33 Ibid p.181
34 Wheeler-Holohan p.115
35 Tilley, Gaselee p.182
36 Ibid p.195
37 TNA ref. WO 339/112210
38 Ibid for these and other details of Oldham’s training and military service
39 Ibid
40 Ibid
41 Dr A Morton, Sandhurst and the First World War: the Royal Military College 1902–1918 (Sandhurst Occasional Paper No. 17, 2014) p.17
42 For Oldham’s movements in the 5th Battalion see TNA ref. WO 95/1902
43 Ibid
44 For Oldham’s movements in the 1st Battalion see TNA ref. WO 95/1609
45 Ibid
46 Ibid
47 Ibid
48 Ibid
49 Ibid
50 Ibid
51 TNA ref. WO 339/112210
52 TNA ref. WO 158/962
53 WO 95/1609
54 Ibid
55 Ibid
56 Ibid
57 Ibid
58 Ibid
59 For details of Oldham’s injury and subsequent treatment, see TNA ref. WO 339/112210
60 TNA ref. FO 371/3220
61 Ibid
62 Ibid
63 Ibid
64 Ibid
65 TNA ref. FO 371/3221
66 Antrobus pp.24–25
67 Tilley, Gaselee p.200
68 M L Dockrill and Zara Steiner ‘The Foreign Office at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919’ (International History Review, 1980) p.56
69 H Nicholson, Peacemaking 1919 (York, 1964) p.242
70 Ibid p.229
71 Dockerill, Steiner p.62
72 Ibid p.64
73 Nicolson pp.122–123
74 Dockerill, Steiner p.67
75 Ibid p.66
76 Ibid p.60
77 Ibid p.68
78 Nicolson, p.314
79 TNA ref. FO 371/3220
80 Nicolson p.262
81 The Times, 11 March 1919
82 Ibid
83 Ibid
84 Ibid p.70
85 Nicolson p.335
> 86 Ibid p.368
87 Ibid p.371
88 TNA ref. FO 369/1462
89 Ibid
90 TNA ref. FO 366/788
91 Ibid
92 Ibid
93 Tilley, Gaselee p.298
94 Antrobus p.46
95 Ibid p.45
96 Ibid
97 Ibid p.97
98 Ibid p.98
99 Ibid
100 Ibid p.150
101 Ibid pp.99–100
102 Ibid p.100
103 Ibid pp.100–101
104 Ibid p.101
105 Ibid p.102
106 Ibid pp.103–104
107 Ibid p.49
108 TNA ref. FO 1103/8
109 Antrobus pp.64–65
110 Ibid p.66
111 Ibid p.65
112 Wheeler-Holohan p.256
113 Antrobus pp.65-66
114 Wheeler-Holohan p.125
115 Antrobus p.67
116 Ibid
117 Ibid
118 TNA ref. FO 1103/17
119 Antrobus pp.67–68
120 TNA ref. FO 1103/4
121 TNA ref. FO 1103/19
122 TNA ref. FO 1103/30
123 Wheeler-Holohan p.106
124 R. C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (London, 1992) p.34
125 Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International
126 For an overview see S Twigge, E Hampshire and G Macklin, British Intelligence (London, 2008)
127 For more information on SIS (MI6) see K. Jeffrey, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service (London, 2010) p.83
128 For a detailed history of MI5 see C Andrew, The Defence of the Realm (London, 2009)
129 Dockerill, Steiner p.83
130 Grigori Zinoviev, ‘Declaration of Zinoviev on the Alleged “Red Plot’, The Communist Review, vol. 5, no. 8 (Dec. 1924) pp.365– 366
131 TNA ref. FO 366/812
132 Ibid
133 Antrobus p.62
134 Ibid pp.62–63
135 TNA ref. FO 1103/50
136 D Sinclair, Two Georges: The Making of the Modern Monarchy (London, 1988), p.105
137 TNA ref. FO 366/838
138 Ibid
139 Ibid
140 TNA ref. FO 1103/56
141 TNA ref. FO 1103/61
142 Minutes of the Fifteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik)
143 Launceston Examiner, 27 April 1898
144 Launceston Daily Telegraph, 28 February 1902
145 Emu Bay Times, 19 March 1902
146 As recounted in B. Bryson, One Summer America 1927 (London, 2013) p.84
147 The Times, 2 February 1907
148 TNA ref. KV 2/808
149 Information drawn from Wellsted’s will, proved in London in 1919
150 Information from Post Office directories and electoral lists
151 TNA ref. KV 2/808
152 Derby Mercury, 9 February 1898
153 London Gazette entries
154 Information from Post Office directories and electoral lists
155 TNA ref. FO 1103/29 and FO 1103/30
156 Chelmsford Chronicle, 19 June 1931
157 TNA ref. FO 371/14050
158 Ibid
159 G. Bessedovsky, Revelations of a Soviet Diplomat (London, 1931), p.243
160 Ibid pp.243–244
161 Ibid p.244
162 Ibid p.245
163 Ibid
164 Ibid p.246
165 Ibid pp.247–248
166 Ibid p.248
167 TNA ref. KV 2/2670
168 TNA ref. FO 1103/92
169 Daily Telegraph, 25 October 1929
170 Townsville Daily Courier, 29 October 1929
171 Canberra Times, 29 October 1929
172 Daily Herald, 29 October 1929
173 TNA ref. FO 1103/92
174 TNA ref. KV 3/12
175 TNA ref. KV 2/2398
176 Our knowledge of Dimitri Bystrolyotov is provided by Emil Draitser’s biography, Stalin’s Romeo Spy (London, 2011) based on an interview conducted with the author in 1973. The following passages are predominantly based on the Soviet files cited in this book, along with contributions from N West and O Tsarev, The Crown Jewels (London, 1998)
177 Draitser p.110
178 Ibid
179 TNA ref. KV 2/2681
180 Draitser p.110
181 TNA ref. KV 2/2681
182 Draitser, pp.110–111
183 See Draitser pp.113–114
184 West p.63
185 See Draitser pp.111–112
186 For details of the operation see Draitser pp.113-120
187 See Draitser pp.125–126
188 Draitser p.126
189 For details of the confrontation, see Draitser pp.126–127
190 Antrobus p.86
191 Draitser, p.128
192 TNA ref. KV 2/808
193 Ibid
194 TNA ref. FO 366/811
195 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
196 Bessedovsky p.247
197 Chelmsford Chronicle, 19 June 1931
198 Antrobus p.184
199 Ibid p.185
200 Ibid
201 TNA ref. FO 1103/100
202 Ibid
203 Draitser p.128
204 As contained in Draitser’s account, pp.128–129
205 Draitser pp.129, 132 and 145
206 Survey of a Quarter of a Century of the Treatment of Alcoholism and Other Drug Habits (London, 1932)
207 Draitser p.129
208 West p.68
209 Draitser p.130
210 Ibid
211 TNA ref. FO 1103/100
212 Ibid
213 Ibid
214 TNA ref. FO 1103/101
215 TNA ref. KV 2/808
216 TNA ref. FO 610/295
217 TNA ref. FO 1103/106
218 Ibid
219 Draitser p.131
220 TNA ref. KV 2/804
221 West pp.68–69
222 TNA ref. KV 2/808
223 For these two quotes, see Draitser pp.133–134
224 TNA ref. FO 371/15929
225 Ibid
226 TNA ref. FO 371/15930
227 Ibid
228 TNA ref. FO 371/15931
229 Cited in West p.69
230 Cited ibid p.70
231 Draitser p.136
232 TNA ref. FO 1103/106
233 Ibid
234 Draitser p.136
235 Ibid p.135
236 Cited in West p.70
237 Draitser p.137
238 Ibid p.135
239 Ibid
240 Cited in West pp.71–72
241 Antrobus p.189
242 TNA ref. KV 2/808
243 Ibid
244 Ibid
245 Ibid
246 Cited in West p.74
247 Movements from KV 2/808
248 Draitser p.144
249 Ibid pp.144–145
250 Cited in C Andrew and V Mitrokhin The Mitrokhin Archive (London, 1999) p.63
251 Antrobus pp.189-190
252 Cited in West p.74
253 TNA ref. KV 2/808
254 Cited in West p.74
255 Draitser p.146
256 TNA ref. KV 2/808
257 Ibid
258 Ibid
259 Ibid
260 Ibid
261 Ibid
262 Ibid
263 Ibid
264 Ibid
265 Ibid
266 Ibid
267 Ibid
268 Cited in Draitser pp.148–149
269 H Romanis, The Compleat Surgeon the Autobiography of the Surgeon WHC Romanis (Suffolk, 2013) p.119
270 TNA ref. KV 2/808
271 Ibid
272 Ibid
273 Ibid
274 Ibid
275 Cited in Draitser p.149
276 Draitser p.150
277 Cited
in Draitser, ibid
278 TNA ref. KV 2/808
279 Ibid
280 Ibid
281 Ibid
282 Cited in West pp.74–75
283 TNA ref. KV 2/808
284 Ibid
285 Ibid
286 Ibid
287 Ibid
288 Ibid
289 Ibid
290 Ibid
291 Ibid
292 Ibid
293 Ibid
294 Ibid
295 TNA ref. FO 1103/112
296 TNA ref. KV 2/808
297 Ibid
298 Ibid
299 Ibid
300 Ibid
301 Ibid
302 Ibid
303 Ibid
304 Ibid
305 Ibid
306 Ibid
307 Ibid
308 Ibid
309 Ibid
310 Ibid
311 Cited in Draitser p.153
312 Ibid p.159
313 TNA ref. KV 2/808
314 Ibid
315 Evening Standard, 26 August 1933
316 TNA ref. KV 2/808
317 Ibid
318 Ibid
319 Ibid
320 Ibid
321 Ibid
322 Ibid (where all these contents are itemised)
323 Ibid
324 Ibid
325 Ibid
326 Ibid
327 Ibid
328 Ibid
329 Ibid
330 Ibid
331 Ibid
332 Ibid
333 Ibid
334 Ibid
335 Ibid
336 Draitser pp.157–158
337 Ibid p.157
338 Ibid p.159
339 Cited in Andrew p.64
340 TNA ref. KV 2/808
341 TNA ref. FO 1103/112
342 TNA ref. FO 366/918
343 The following information is derived from Bystrolyotov’s correspondence with Lucy, recounted in Draitser pp.160–162
344 Cited in Draitser p.160
345 Cited in West p.75
346 Ibid
347 Ibid
348 Cited in Draitser p.161
349 Ibid
350 TNA ref. FO 1103/113
351 London Gazette, 31 August 1934
352 Draitser p.163
353 Much of this information is contained in Pieck’s files collated by MI5 TNA ref. KV 2/812-814
354 Cited in West p.79
355 Cited in West pp.79–80
356 Ibid p.81
357 Ibid p.87
358 Ibid p.85
359 Ibid pp.85–86
360 Ibid pp.87–88
361 Ibid p.88
362 TNA ref. KV 4/185
363 TNA ref. KV 2/816
364 Ibid
365 Ibid
366 Ibid
367 Ibid
368 Ibid
369 Ibid
370 Ibid
371 Ibid
372 TNA ref. KV 2/804
373 Ibid
374 Ibid
375 Ibid, also KV 2/808 where the statement is questioned
