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Arthur Martin went to a local grammar school before being employed during the Second World War by the Radio Security Service (RSS).

After the war Dick White persuaded Martin to join MI5. Over the next few years he emerged as the organization's most important investgative officers.

In 1951 Martin was involved in the investigation of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. After looking at the files he became convinced that Kim Philby was also a spy. These views were not shared by those in power and Dick White sent to Malaya as part of Britain's successful counterinsurgency campaign.

When Martin Furnival Jones became head of MI5 he brought Martin back to England. In 1959 he became head of D1 and became responsible for Soviet Counter Espionage. In this role he interviewed Anatoli Golitsin, the KGB officer who had defected to the CIA in December, 1961. Golitsin claimed that Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess were members of a Ring of Five agents based in Britain. Martin eventually came to the conclusion that Director General Roger Hollis or his deputy, Graham Mitchell had been involved in Philby's spy ring.

Martin arranged for Kim Philby to be interviewed in Beirut by Nicholas Elliot. Comments by Philby in the interview convinced Martin that there was still a Soviet spy working at the centre of MI5.

In January 1964 Martin interviewed Michael Straight, an American who had studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. While at university he became friends with Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. Straight claimed that Blunt had tried to recruit him to become a Soviet spy.

Martin and Jim Skardon had interviewed Blunt eleven times since 1951. Martin, now armed with Straight's story, went to see Blunt again. This time he made a confession. He admitted being a Soviet agent and named John Cairncross, Peter Ashby, Brian Symon and Leo Long as spies he had recruited.

Martin was disappointed when it was discovered that Roger Hollis and the British government had decided not to put Anthony Blunt on trial. Martin once again began to argue that there was still a Soviet spy working at the centre of MI5. Hollis thought Martin's suggestion was highly damaging to the organization and ordered Martin to be suspended from duty.

After his suspension had ended, Arthur Martin, along with Martin Furnival Jones and Peter Wright, went to see Dick White, head of MI6. They told White that they were convinced that either Hollis or his deputy, Graham Mitchell, were Soviet agents. White contacted Hollis and it was agreed that Mitchell should be kept under constant surveillance. Hollis was also investigated but no evidence was found and he was officially cleared of being a spy.

Martin examined the documents of all the different cases that had involved Graham Mitchell over the years. This convinced Martin that Mitchell was a Soviet mole. He informed Roger Hollis but he refused his request to tap Mitchell's phone.

Arthur Martin also investigated the claim made by James Angleton that Hugh Gaitskell had been murdered in January 1963 to allow Harold Wilson, a KGB agent, to become leader of the Labour Party. However, no evidence was found to substantiate this claim.

In 1964 Roger Hollis ordered the investigation into Graham Mitchell should be brought to an end. Martin protested by accusing Hollis of protecting Mitchell. Hollis was furious and took his revenge by replacing Martin with Ronald Symonds as head of DI (Investigations). Soon afterwards Martin was sacked from MI5.

When Dick White heard the news he offered Martin a job with MI6. However, Martin's career as MI5's chief investigating officer had come to an end.

Arthur Martin died in 1996.

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(1) Peter Wright, Spycatcher (1987)

Arthur Martin, a former Army signals officer who joined MI5 soon after the war. Martin quickly proved himself a brilliant and intuitive case officer, handling in quick succession the Fuchs and Maclean investigations, ably assisted by Evelyn McBarnet, a young woman research officer, whose contribution to these cases has never been adequately acknowledged. Martin had one huge advantage in his approach to counterespionage work: he never attended a public school. Once it was known that a serious leakage of secrets had occurred at the British Embassy in Washington, the conventional view was to search for the culprit among the clerks, cleaners, and secretaries. But Martin realized at an early stage that the culprit was a senior diplomat. He doggedly pursued the investigation, and was only foiled when Maclean defected.

After the defections, Martin pressed the management of MI5 to sanction urgent inquiries into the whole complex network of Communist infiltrations of Cambridge in the 1930s. But his requests for permission to interview the numerous members of the Philby, Burgess, and Maclean social circles were mostly refused. For two years he struggled against this woeful policy, until finally he went to see the Director-General, Dick White, and told him that he intended to resign and take a job with the new Australian Security Intelligence Organization, ASIO.

White, who had a high regard for Martin's abilities, persuaded him to go to Malaya instead, as MI5's Security Liaison Officer, until the climate in D Branch was better. It was, at the time, a vital job, and Martin played a leading role in the successful counterinsurgency campaign in Malaya, but the consequences for counterespionage were disastrous. For most of the decade MI5's most talented, if temperamental, officer was missing.

(2) Peter Wright wrote about how Arthur Martin was sacked by Roger Hollis in his book Spycatcher (1987)

I remember Arthur came to my office the day it happened, steely quiet.

"They've sacked me," he said simply. "Roger's given me two days to clear my desk." In fact, he was taken on straightaway by MI6, at Dick White's insistence and over Hollis' protests. But although this transfer saved Arthur's pension, his career was cut off in its prime.

I could scarcely believe it. Here was the finest counterespionage officer in the world, a man at that time with a genuine international reputation for his skill and experience, sacked for the pettiest piece of bureaucratic bickering. This was the man who since 1959 had built Dl from an utterly ineffectual section into a modern, aggressive, and effective counterespionage unit. It was still grossly undermanned, it was true, but that was no fault of Arthur's.

Arthur's great flaw was naiveté. He never understood the extent to which he had made enemies over the years. His mistake was to assume that advancement would come commensurately with achievement. He was an ambitious man, as he had every right to be. But his was not the ambition of petty infighting. He wanted to slay the dragons and fight the beasts outside, and could never understand why so few of his superiors supported him in his simple approach. He was temperamental, he was obsessive, and he was often possessed by peculiar ideas, but the failure of MI5 to harness his temperament and exploit his great gifts is one of the lasting indictments of the organization.