Maxwell Knight

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Charles Henry Maxwell Knight OBE (born July 9, 1900 in South Norwood , London ; died January 27, 1968 ) was a British intelligence officer and author of nature books . He is considered to be one of the role models for the character of the agent leader " M " in the film adaptations of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.

Life

Maxwell Knight grew up in London and was still a soldier in the Royal Navy towards the end of the First World War . After that he carried out various activities. In 1923 he was recruited from the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) as an agent in order to observe the emerging British Fascisti fascist scene . It is unclear to what extent he adopted the fascist ideology. From the mid-1920s he also worked as an agent recruiter. Knight published a spy novel during this time. In 1936 he became department head at the Security Service (MI5).

With the help of Olga Gray, whom he had recruited, he arranged for the imprisonment and conviction of several agents of the Soviet Union in the vicinity of the British Communist Party in 1938 . Shortly before the war began, he warned the British fascist William Joyce of imminent arrest, and Joyce then fled to Berlin. In 1940 he convicted the US embassy employee Tyler Kent who wanted to pass documents from the radio communications between Churchill and Roosevelt to the Germans. He was promoted to major during World War II. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1943. Knight retired from the secret service in 1956 for health reasons.

The character of the agent leader Brotherhood in John le Carre's novel A Perfect Spy is based on Knight; Knight was the superior of le Carrés in his agent time. Knight is considered a model for James Bond - novel and film characters M and Q .

Knight was an animal lover and in 1947 he was a co-founder of the British Herpetological Society ( herpetologist ). He wrote a large number of animal books and brochures for the young animal lover and has been producing radio programs for the BBC since 1946 . He also appeared on nature programs on television alongside David Attenborough .

Fonts (selection)

  • Crime Cargo . Novel. London: Philip Allan. 1934
  • Gunman's Holiday . Novel. London: Philip Allan. 1935. Dedicated to Dennis Wheatley and his wife .
  • Pets, usual and unusual . Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1951
  • The Young Naturalists Field Guide . G. Bell, London 1952
  • Keeping reptiles and fishes . London, Nicholson and Watson, 1952
  • Bird Gardening: How to Attract Birds . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1954
  • A cuckoo in the house . Methuen, London 1955
  • Animals after dark . Routledge & K. Paul, London 1956
  • British amphibians, reptiles and pond dwellers . Museum Press, London 1956
  • Maxwell Knight Replies. 225 Natural History Questions Answered . Illustrations Rona Cloy. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1959
  • Taming and handling animals . London, Bell, 1959
  • Frogs, Toads and Newts in Britain . Brockhampton Press, London 1962
  • Animals and ourselves . Hodder and Stoughton, London 1962
  • Hedgehogs . Sunday Times, London 1962
  • with L. Harrison Matthews : Senses of animals . Museum Press, London 1963
  • My pet friends . Frederick Warne, London 1964
  • Birds as living things: an introduction to the study of birds . Illustrations RA Richardson. Collins, London 1964
  • Reptiles in Britain . Heinemann, London 1965
  • The small water mammals . Illustrations by Barry Driscoll . McGraw-Hill, New York 1968
  • Pets and their Problems: a guide for animal lovers . Heinemann, London 1968
  • Be a Nature Detective . Illustrations Reginald Ben Davis . Warne, London 1969.
  • Tortoises and how to keep them . Illustrations John Norris Wood. Brockhampton Press, Leicester 1970
  • "Specter of destruction": The Lost Manuscript of the Real-Life 'M' , in: The Guardian , October 28, 2015

literature

  • Henry Hemming: M: Maxwell Knight, M15's Greatest Spymaster . PublicAffairs, New York 2017.
  • Anthony Masters: The Man Who Was M: The Life of Maxwell Knight . Grafton Books, London 1986, ISBN 978-0-586-06867-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Curtis B. Robinson: Caught Red Starred: The Woolwich Spy-Ring and Stalin's Naval Rearmament on the Eve of War . Bloomington IN. : Xlibris, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4653-4041-2
  2. ^ Paul Willetts: Rendezvous at the Russian tea rooms . Constable, London 2015, ISBN 9781472119858 .
  3. ↑ Adam Sisman: John le Carre. The biography . Bloomsbury, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-4088-4944-6
  4. ↑ a b Lara Feigel: A free agent . Review, in: Financial Times , April 29, 2017, p. 9
  5. ↑ the German counterpart to the "British Herpetological Society" is the German Society for Herpetology and Terrarium Science
personal data
SURNAME Knight, Maxwell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Knight, Charles Henry Maxwell (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British secret service agent and author of nature books
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH South Norwood , London
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1968