A Suspicion of Spies
384 pages
Andy Field
On receiving Tim Spicer’s book on the life of Wilfred ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale, it struck me that this wasn’t the usual sort of book I reviewed for The Naval Review. Yet with ringing endorsements from the likes of Andrew Roberts and General David Petraeus, former Director General of the CIA, who calls it “…a truly cracking read…”, I was intrigued. Surely a book about someone called Biffy, who had friends with names like Fruity, would be worth a read? That’s not even mentioning the quotes at the start of chapters from the likes of Sun Tzu, Led Zepplin, and Bruce Springsteen. Not what I would usually expect.
Biffy Dunderdale was “…an intrepid, diabolically creative and exceedingly effective intelligence officer…” who was active throughout most of the 20th century, and Tim Spicer soon had me hooked. Biffy’s early life, from his birth in Odesa, with his father a British shipping agent, his mother, an Austrian countess, and language teacher, seemed the stuff of novels, an amalgam of plots by Ian Fleming, John Le Carré and Ben Macintyre.
His early exploits seemed to bear this out, whether taking command of a Russian submarine whilst on a training cruise and sinking four German ships, later narrowly avoided being sunk by the Russians after the submarine became trapped in the net defences of Kronstadt. Subsequently decorated by the Tsar for bravery, his story reads like a ‘ripping yarn’, or something from a 1960s comic. I can see why the historian Andrew Roberts had likened the book to a “…terrific movie script…”. Then there are his subsequent exploits, working as a civilian interpreter and agent for the Naval Intelligence Division, back in Odesa and later, Constantinople, building up networks of agents and monitoring nationalist and Bolshevik activities. Running agents into the Soviet Union was apparently Biffy’s particular forte.
Next came the posting as Head of Station in 1920s Paris, which suited Biffy down to the ground. A bon viveur, with a winning personality and a private income that allowed him to lavishly entertain all manner of contacts, he became an expert field officer, with a growing network of contacts of emigres and defectors. He also forged close links with his counterparts in both the Deuxième Bureau, and with Polish intelligence officers. As war clouds slowly gathered over Europe, their combined attentions shifted from the Russians to the rising fascist regimes of Italy, Germany and Spain. Tim Spicer suggests that “…Biffy saw himself as merely a facilitator for the tie-up between the Poles, French and British cryptanalysts…”, but if so, he was a highly successful one, liaising with the Poles and acquiring one of the first Enigma machines for Bletchley Park.
Things take a darker turn once the reader learns of Biffy’s many and varied activities in Occupied Europe and Vichy France. What had read as a series of ‘larks’ changed to a much deadlier set of activities. Working in Paris and then London, Biffy established networks of agents throughout Occupied Europe and Vichy France, men and women who repeatedly risked imprisonment, torture and death in the struggle against Nazi occupation. There must be so much that should be told of the activities of Biffy and his compatriots in SIS, SOE and OSS, and Tim Spicer certainly whet my appetite for more. I’m afraid I found myself getting confused sometimes, losing the chronology, constantly having to checking back on code names, who was who, what was what and when and I would advise readers to take their time with these chapters, as there was just so much to understand and appreciate.
Without a doubt, Biffy was an effective and influential intelligence operative, but he and his fellow, independently-minded, ‘licensed thugs’, known as the ‘Robber Barons’, were increasingly regarded as anachronisms in the postwar intelligence community. A series of costly mistakes, including the mysterious death of Buster Crabbe, and the failure to identify the Cambridge Five, particularly Kim Philby, resulting in the widespread betrayals of agents, highlighted failings in the old ways of operating and signalled a shift away from the ‘old boys network’.
Biffy retired in 1959, although Tim Spicer suggests that Biffy continued working as an adviser, on an ad hoc basis for longer. No one, of course, knows the truth, or if they do, they are not letting on, all of which adds spice to the story. Biffy died in 1990, taking many secrets with him, no doubt.
Tim Spicer concludes his biography by returning to the fictional world of espionage. He discusses how much of Ian Fleming’s James Bond, could have been inspired by Biffy, someone Fleming knew and worked closely with during the war. Spicer teases his readers with comparisons before coming back to Fleming’s own explanation that the fictional 007 was an amalgam of all of the secret agents and commandos Fleming encountered during the war.
I enjoyed this book; I think Tim Spicer has produced an entertaining, engaging and accessible biography that left me wanting to know more about the larger-than-life and times of a remarkable man I’d not really heard of before. I’d recommend the book, especially to fans of 007 or George Smiley. It can be bought in hardback or paperback. Or perhaps we could just wait for the movie!
