Charles Maxwell Knight was born in Mitcham, Surrey on 4th September, 1900. After finishing his education he spent time in the Royal Navy. Knight held extreme right-wing views and after leaving the navy worked for the Economic League.
In 1924 Knight joined the British Fascisti (BF), an organization established to counter the growing powers of the Labour Party and the Trade Union movement. Its leader, Rotha Lintorn-Orman, explained why she established the group in 1923: "I saw the need for an organization of disinterested patriots, composed of all classes and all Christian creeds, who would be ready to serve their country in any emergency." Members of the British Fascists had been horrified by the Russian Revolution. However, they had gained inspiration from what Benito Mussolini had done it Italy.
Linton-Orman was impressed by Knight and soon after he joined the British Fascists he was appointed as the organization's Director of Intelligence. In this role he had responsibility for compiling intelligence dossiers on its enemies; for planning counter-espionage and for establishing and supervising fascist cells operating in the trade union movement.
Knight's work as Director of Intelligence for the British Fascists brought him to the attention of Vernon Kell, Director of the Home Section of the Secret Service Bureau. This government organization had responsibility of investigating espionage, sabotage and subversion in Britain and was also known as MI5.
In 1925 Kell recruited Knight to work for the Secret Service Bureau. Knight played a significant role in helping to defeat the General Strike in 1926 and by the early 1930s was placed in charge of B5b, a unit that conducted the monitoring of political subversion.
Knight also found time to write a couple of thrillers, Crime Cargo (1934) and Gunmen's Holiday (1935). He also played the drums in a jazz band and was a Fellow of the Royal Zoological Society.
Knight recruited Bill Younger, who was a student at Oxford University. His job was to spy on a group of pacifists who were active in the Oxford Union. MI5 had become concerned when the motion "this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country".
Another of Knight's agents was Olga Grey. Although only 19 she joined the Friends of the Soviet Union. She soon gained the confidence of Percy Glading, a member of the Communist Party. In 1937 Glading asked Grey to find a safe house. This became a meeting place for Glading and Theodore Maly, a Soviet intelligence officer. Glading also arranged for several people working at Woolwich Aresnal, to take pictures of blueprints of weapons being developed. On 14th May, 1938, Glading, Albert Williams and George Whomack were convicted under the Official Secrets Act.
The vast majority of Knight's agents were part-time. Knight recruited a large number of his agents from right-wing political organizations such as the Nordic League, British Union of Fascists and the Right Club. These agents then infiltrated left-wing organizations such as the Communist Party. One of these agents, William Joyce, created some embarrassment when during the Second World War he turned up in Nazi Germany as Lord Haw Haw.
Knight would have regular meetings with his agents. These usually took place in the lobbies of second-rate hotels. Knight used a whole range of different code names to hide his identity. He also established a small office in Dolphin Square which he purchased in his wife's name. Although his office was located close to the MI5 offices at Thames House on Millbank, it helped to distance him from the main organization. One of his agents was Ian Fleming and the 'M' character in the James Bond books is based on Knight.
One of Knight's most important agents was Joan Miller, a member of various right-wing organizations. Miller eventually became very close to Archibald Ramsay, the leader of the Right Club. After the outbreak of the Second World War Miller began to suspect that Ramsay was a German spy. Miller also believed that Anna Wolkoff, who ran the Russian Tea Room in South Kensington, the main meeting place for members of the Right Club, was also involved in espionage.
In February 1940, Anna Wolkoff met Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk from the American Embassy. He soon became a regular visitor to the Russian Tea Room where he met other members of the Right Club including Archibald Ramsay. Wolkoff, Kent and Ramsay talked about politics and agreed that they all shared the same views on politics.
Kent was concerned that the American government wanted the United States to join the war against Germany. He said he had evidence of this as he had been making copies of the correspondence between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Kent invited Wolkoff and Ramsay back to his flat to look at these documents. This included secret assurances that the United States would support France if it was invaded by the German Army. Kent later argued that he had shown these documents to Ramsay in the hope that he would pass this information to American politicians hostile to Roosevelt.
On 13th April 1940 Anna Wolkoff went to Kent's flat and made copies of some of these documents. Joan Miller and Marjorie Amor were later to testify that these documents were then passed on to Duco del Monte, Assistant Naval Attaché at the Italian Embassy. Soon afterwards, MI8, the wireless interception service, picked up messages between Rome and Berlin that indicated that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence (Abwehr), now had copies of the Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence
Soon afterwards Wolkoff asked Joan Miller if she would use her contacts at the Italian Embassy to pass a coded letter to William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) in Germany. The letter contained information that he could use in his broadcasts on Radio Hamburg. Before passing the letter to her contacts, Miller showed it to Maxwell Knight.
On 18th May, Knight told Guy Liddell about the Right Club spy ring. Liddell immediately had a meeting with Joseph Kennedy, the American Ambassador in London. Kennedy agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity and on 20th May, 1940, the Special Branch raided his flat. Inside they found the copies of 1,929 classified documents including secret correspondence between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Kent was also found in possession of what became known as Ramsay's Red Book. This book had details of the supporters of the Right Club and had been given to Kent for safe keeping.
Anna Wolkoff and Tyler Kent were arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act. The trial took place in secret and on 7th November 1940, Wolkoff was sentenced to ten years. Kent, because he was an American citizen, was treated less harshly and received only seven years. It is said that after being sentenced Wolkoff swore that she would get revenge by killing Joan Miller.
Knight also recruited Tom Driberg as an agent for MI5. In 1941 Anthony Blunt informed Harry Pollitt that Driberg was an informer and he was expelled from the Communist Party. Knight now suspected that his unit had been infiltrated by the KGB but it was not until after the war that MI5 discovered that Blunt was responsible for exposing Driberg.
In 1945 Knight worked on the case of Igor Gouzenko, a Russian cipher clerk who defected to the Canadians. Gouzenko claimed that there was a spy code-named Elli inside MI5. Knight later wrote that if MI5 had been penetrated he thought it was most likely to be Roger Hollis or Graham Mitchell.
As well as working for MI5 Knight was a recognized expert in the fields of ornithology and zoology. He was also the successful author of books on natural history. This included Young Field Naturalist's Guide (1952), Bird Gardening (1954), Reptiles in Britain (1965), How to Keep an Elephant (1967), How to Keep a Gorilla (1968) and Be a Nature Detective (1968).
Charles Maxwell Knight died of a heart attack on 27th January, 1968.
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(1) Joan Miller, One Girl's War (1970)
One morning Bill Younger... came into my cell with a message from Maxwell Knight, the head of B5(b). I was invited to lunch in the staff canteen with this distinguished MI5 officer who, it seemed, had had his eye on me for some time. Naturally, I was intrigued and flattered. I knew Maxwell Knight by sight and reputation; I was aware that he ran B5(b) with no more than three or four case officers and a secretary, that he was known as 'M' or 'Max', that he cultivated some engaging eccentricities such as smoking long hand-made cigarettes from a little tobacconist's shop in Sloane Street. Rather tall and lanky, with a Wellingtonian nose which he referred to as 'my limb', always dressed in stylishly shabby tweeds, he made a conspicuous figure about the place. I was instantly aware of my good fortune and, at the same time, determined not to let it go to my head. I gratefully accepted the luncheon invitation, though.
At twelve-thirty I went into the canteen and saw Maxwell Knight at a table for two in the comer of the room. He got to his feet as I approached; even before he spoke, I was conscious of the charm this smiling man possessed - charm of a rare and formidable order. His voice, which I found hypnotic, confirmed the impression. By the end of that first lunchtime session I was capitvated. M. at the time, must have been about twice my age; it's possible, I suppose, that I had been subconsciously on the look-out for a 'father figure' - my own, an amiable, rather weak man who liked to gamble, hadn't exactly come up to scratch as a parent - but there was a great deal more than that to my feeling for M, even at this early stage.
(2) Nigel West, MI5 (1983)
Max Knight was a remarkable ex-Naval officer who joined MI5 in 1924 and was to have considerable influence with the intelligence hierarchy and indeed the government. He was also to keep Churchill informed of intelligence developments through his personal assistant Major Desmond Morton, who had become a close friend. When Churchill became Prime Minister, Knight retained his ear and friendship.
(3) Joan Miller, One Girl's War (1970)
The Communist threat was something about which M (Maxwell Knight) felt very deeply indeed; his views on this subject, you might say, amounted almost to an obsession. He was equally adamant in his aversion to Jews and homosexuals, but prepared to suspend these prejudices in certain cases. 'Bloody Jews' was one of his expressions (you have only to read the popular novels of the period - thrillers in particular - to understand just how widespread this particular prejudice was).
(4) Christopher Andrew, Secret Service (1985)
In the course of the 1930s, as Maxwell Knight's network of agents infiltrating Communist and subversive groups expanded, he became head of an ultra-secret section of MIS known as BSb, based at a house in Dolphin Square held in the name of 'Miss Coplestone'. His agents within the Communist Party (CPGB), most of whose names still remain hidden in MIS files, included at least one 'close to', though not actually on, the Central Committee." Knight's success owed something to the seductive force of his personality. Though he failed to consummate his first two marriages and his first wife committed suicide, he seemed to his wartime assistant Joan Miller to exude animal magnetism. 'He could', she believed, 'make men and women do anything'. Knight also had for a time a rather disturbing interest in the occult, going with Denis Wheadey to seances by the notorious Satanist Aleister Crowley to research black magic for Wheatley's novels.
(5) Joan Miller, One Girl's War (1970)
Towards the end of 1945 I was summoned by M to a rendezvous at the Royal Court Hotel; though I didn't realize it, this would be the last time I was ever to see him. There, he told me quite brutally that he had taken steps to ensure that the blame for destroying the Andrews/Darwell file - an act of M's which had shocked me greatly in 1941 - would fall on me, should the matter ever be brought to light. I think I must have stared blankly at him for quite a while, as the implications of his statement sank into my mind. 'You've arranged to put the blame on me,' I said, to get it quite clear. 'Max, this is perfectly dreadful of you. You know it simply isn't true.'
There is some evidence which suggests, to my mind, that M was being subject to blackmail in the later part of his life: why else should he have been impoverished to the extent of having to move in with his old B5(b) colleague Guy Poston and his family? He was never rich, it's true, but he always had enough to enjoy a way of life that suited him. And why did he opt for the comparative anonymity of radio work, when he'd have made such a splendid television performer? There may be some perfectly innocuous explanation, of course, but I can't help feeling that one of the risks he'd taken in his private life might have caught up with him.
(6) Steve MacDononogh, Why Whitehall Wants to Ban This Book (1986)
One Girl's War poses no threat to national security; if other books do and if the Government wishes to take action against them, then that is their business, not ours. The content of One Girl's War has to do solely with events which took place over forty years ago, and we believe that it should be considered for what it is, not for what other books might be.
The Government's attempt to suppress One Girl's War is part of a larger project to keep from the British public any information about the operations of the intelligence services and thus to render impossible any public debate on the matter. In the 1960s and 1970s most countries of the western world gradually liberalised public access to information; in the 1980s Margaret Thatcher's Governments have sought to reverse that trend. There are general ideological reasons for this, and there are particular reasons.
Between 1974 and 1976 a coalition of right-wing Conservative politicians and elements of the armed forces and of the intelligence services worked secretly to subvert the elected Labour Government led by Harold Wilson. It is not suggested that this coalition was responsible for the demise of the Wilson Government and the installing of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. But the whole notion of such secret activity involving state security services in efforts to undermine the elected Government runs so sharply against the general perception of British democratic tradition that it is hardly surprising if the Thatcher Government is determined to ensure that the full story is never told.
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