The Man Who Was M

"A fascinating study of a prominent M.I.5 officer and of how his private character affected his judgement -- not always for the good" -- Graham Greene When Maxwell Knight died in 1968, millions knew him as a well-loved British rado and television naturalist. Few, if any, were aware that this avuncular man with a brilliant rapport with animals had been one of the most important and mysterious figures in M.I.5. Maxwell Knight was a student of the occult, cricketer, jazz-musician and naturalist. He was also a spy-master -- and Ian Fleming's model for 'M", James Bond's shadowy boss. In the late 1930's he gathered round him an elite group of young case-officers in Department B5(b) -- M.I.5's most secret outpost. Known as Knight's Black Agents, these men and women made a crucial contribution to Britain's readiness for the Second World War. Knight's responsibility was counter-subversion. He planted agents in the Communist Party of Great Britain, the British Union of Fascists and other pre-war extremist groups. He exposed the Communist-inspired Woolwich Arsenal Spy Ring in 1938, interned Oswald Mosley, the British Fascist leader, in 1940 and in the same year uncovered a Nazi plot to prevent America's entry into the war. His private life was a disaster: his first wife committed suicide and the two subsequent marriages were strained. Anthony Masters has tracked down and interviewed Knight's surviving case-officers and agents, now scattered all over the world -- some still in hiding. Together they have been able to piece together the fascinating story of an extraordinary man.