Alexander, (Conel) Hugh O'Donel (1909–1974), chess player and cryptanalyst, was born in Cork on 19 April 1909, the eldest of four children of Conel William Long Alexander (1879–1920), professor of engineering at University College, Cork, and his wife, Hilda Barbara Bennett (1881–1964), of ...
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Harry Golombek
revised by Ralph Erskine
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Alex May
Allbeury, Theodore Edward Le Bouthillier [Ted] (1917–2005), intelligence officer and novelist, was born on 24 October 1917 at 478 Manchester Road, Stockport, Lancashire, the son of Theodore Allbeury, cotton goods buyer, and his wife, Florence, née Bailey. He had one sister. His father died when ...
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Sir Robert Anderson (1841–1918) by James Russell & Sons © National Portrait Gallery, London
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Anderson, Sir Robert (1841–1918), spymaster, detective chief, and author, was born on 29 May 1841 in Mountjoy Square, Dublin, the son of Matthew Anderson (1804–1888), crown solicitor, Dublin, and his wife, Mary. He himself described his more distant forebears as 'among the Scotch colonists who made ...
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John André (1750–1780) by John Keyse Sherwin, 1781 (after self-portrait, 1780) © National Portrait Gallery, London
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André, John (1750–1780), army officer and spy, was born in London on 2 May 1750, the eldest son of Anthony André (1717–1769), a Genevese merchant settled in the city, and Marie Louise Girardot (1721?–1813). He had at least one brother and sister. He was educated at home and possibly at ...
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Geoffrey Smith
Armorer, Sir Nicholas (c. 1620–1686), royalist army officer, conspirator, and courtier, was born at Belford, Northumberland, a younger son of Thomas Armorer (d. 1642), of Belford, and his wife, Margaret, daughter of Robert Clavering of Callaly in the same county. Like his brother ...
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Alan Stewart
Bacon, Anthony (1558–1601), spy, was the fourth of five sons of Sir Nicholas Bacon (1510–1579), administrator, of Gorhambury, Hertfordshire, and the first with his second wife, Anne, née Cooke (c.1528–1610) [see Bacon, Anne], daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke of ...
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Baillie [Bailly], Charles (c. 1541–1625), conspirator and informer, was probably born in the Low Countries of Scottish descent. He was a good linguist, and from about 1564 found employment in the household of Mary, queen of Scots. By 1571 he was in the service of ...
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Robert Blake
revised
Ball, Sir (George) Joseph (1885–1961), intelligence officer and political administrator, was born at 24 Inkerman Street, Luton, Bedfordshire, on 21 September 1885, the son of George Ball, bookstall clerk, of Salisbury, and his wife, Sarah Ann Headey. He was educated at King's College School, Strand...
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Alan Marshall
Bampfield, Joseph (1622–1685), army officer and spy, was probably born in Devon, one of a family long established in the west country, but his parentage and early life are obscure. There is no validity for the earl of Clarendon's later statement that he was an Irishman, although he may have been educated at ...
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Edward Bancroft (1744–1821) by Nathan Branwhite, pubd 1801 (after Samuel Medley, 1800) [Institutors of the Medical Society of London; standing, far left] © Copyright The British Museum
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Anthony S. Travis
Bancroft, Edward (1744–1821), chemist and spy, was born at Westfield, Massachusetts, on 9 January 1744. His tutor was Silas Deane, later a member of the American congress. After a brief apprenticeship to a physician in Connecticut, Bancroft went to sea at the age of eighteen. In 1763 he was in ...
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Barry, Sir (Philip) Stuart Milner- (1906–1995), code-breaker and chess player, was born on 20 September 1906 in Hendon, London, the second youngest of six children (five sons and one daughter) of Edward Leopold Milner-Barry, a schoolteacher (later professor of modern languages at the ...
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Robin Denniston
Bazna, Elyesa [alias Cicero] (b. 1903), spy, was born at Pristina near Belgrade, the son of Albanian parents. He later said that his father, Hafiz Yazan Bazna, was a mullah, and that both his grandfather and one of his uncles were among ...
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![Cover Beach, Thomas Billis [Henri Le Caron] (1841–1894)](/cover/searchableMedia/odnb-9780198614128-e-1009118-graphic-1-thumbnail.jpg)
Thomas Billis Beach [Henri Le Caron] (1841–1894) by Sydney Prior Hall, pubd 1889 [giving evidence before the Parnell commission] © National Portrait Gallery, London
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K. R. M. Short
Beach, Thomas Billis [alias Henri Le Caron] (1841–1894), spy, was born on 26 September 1841 at Colchester, Essex, the second son of the family of thirteen children of John Joseph Billis Beach (d. 1888/9), a Methodist cooper, and his wife, Maria Beach, ...
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William Bedloe (1650–1680) by Robert White, pubd 1681 © National Portrait Gallery, London
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Alan Marshall
Bedloe, William (1650–1680), informer and adventurer, was the second son of Isaac Bedloe (d. 1656). William Bedloe was born in Chepstow on 20 May 1650 and spent his early life both there and in Bristol. Much of his early life was deliberately clouded in obscurity. His own published account of his parentage and ancestry remains dubious. He claimed that his father had been a gentleman soldier who had served the king in the civil wars and whose own father was ...
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D. Cameron Watt
Best, Sigismund Payne (1885–1978), intelligence officer, was born on 14 April 1885 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the son of Dr George Payne Best (1844–1907), then senior physician at Birmingham General Hospital, and his wife, Catherine Sophia Allison (1846–1907). His maternal grandmother was said to have been the daughter of an Indian maharaja. He was privately educated in ...
