Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen | |
|---|---|
 Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen (second from left), while British Ambassador to Turkey, next to Anthony Eden, April 1941 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 26 March 1886 Chelsea, London, England |
| Died | 21 March 1971 (aged 84) Bridge, Kent, England |
| Education | Balliol College, Oxford |
| Occupation | Diplomat |
| Nickname | Snatch |
Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen KCMG (26 March 1886 – 21 March 1971)[1] was a British diplomat, civil servant and author. He is best remembered as the diplomat whose secrets were stolen by his valet and passed to Nazi Germany during the Cicero spy affair.[2]
Background and education
[edit]He was the second son of Reverend Reginald Bridges Knatchbull-Hugessen, son of Sir Edward Knatchbull, 9th Baronet, and his second wife Rachel Mary, daughter of Admiral Sir Alexander Montgomery, 3rd Baronet.[3] At school, he was known as "Snatch", a nickname that stayed with him for life.[4] He was educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated BA in 1907.[5] In 1908, he joined the Foreign Office.[6]
Career
[edit]
He was appointed attaché in 1909 and posted to Constantinople.[5] During the First World War, he worked in the contraband department. Following the 1918 merger of the Foreign and Diplomatic Services, he became eligible for broader postings. Promoted to first secretary, he joined the British delegation at the Versailles Conference in January 1919,[6] and was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1920 New Year Honours.[7]
After postings in The Hague and Paris, he served as counsellor in Brussels from 1926 to 1930.[1] In 1931, he became Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, stationed at Riga.[8] He was later posted to Tehran as envoy to Persia.[6] In 1936, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG),[9] and later that year became Ambassador to China.[10]
In 1937, while travelling between Nanking and Shanghai, he was seriously wounded when his car was strafed by a Japanese fighter aircraft. He was the only passenger hit and narrowly avoided paralysis. The attack caused an international diplomatic incident.[5][11]
After recovering, he was appointed Ambassador to Turkey in 1939.[12] There, he competed for diplomatic influence with the German ambassador, Franz von Papen. In 1943, he took part in secret negotiations with Hungary. On 9 September 1943, aboard a yacht in the Sea of Marmara, he concluded a preliminary armistice with Hungarian diplomat László Veress.[13] The agreement became void when Soviet troops reached Hungary first.[14]
Between November 1943 and March 1944, his Kosovar Albanian valet, Elyesa Bazna (codenamed "Cicero"),[15] photographed top-secret British documents and sold them to Nazi Germany.[16] Sir John Dashwood later revealed that Bazna accessed documents during the ambassador's daily piano practice or while he was in the bathroom.[17][18] Despite the resulting scandal, Knatchbull-Hugessen's career continued and he was appointed Ambassador to Belgium and Minister to Luxembourg in 1944, retiring in 1947.[19]
Family
[edit]On 16 July 1912, he married Mary Gordon-Gilmour (1890–1978), daughter of Brigadier-General Sir Robert Gilmour, 1st Baronet. They had three children, their daughter Elisabeth Knatchbull-Hugessen (1915–1957), married Sir George Young, her father's private secretary, who had saved her life during the 1937 attack in China.[20] Their son is the Conservative politician Sir George Young.
Works
[edit]- Diplomat in Peace and War (1949)
- Kentish Family (1960)
Popular culture
[edit]- 5 Fingers (1952), a film based on the Cicero affair. Knatchbull-Hugessen is fictionalised as Sir Frederic Taylor, played by Walter Hampden.[21]
- Operation Cicero (2019), a Turkish historical film. Tamer Levent plays Knatchbull-Hugessen.[22]
Footnotes
[edit]- ^ a b "ArchiveSearch". ArchiveSearch. Retrieved 6 August 2025.
- ^ "Sir Hughe Knatchbull‐Hugessen, 'Cicero' Spy Case Victim, Dead". The New York Times. 23 March 1971.
- ^ Fox-Davies, Arthur Charles (1929). Armorial Families. Vol. II. London: Hurst & Blackett. p. 1110.
- ^ Jones, Thomas (4 April 2002). "Thomas Jones · Short Cuts: military intelligence · LRB 4 April 2002". London Review of Books.
- ^ a b c Wires, Richard (1999). The Cicero spy affair: German access to British secrets in World War II. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 18–19. ISBN 0-275-96456-6.
- ^ a b c Who Is Who 1963. London: Adam & Charles Black. 1963. p. 1745.
- ^ "No. 31712". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 1919. p. 5.
- ^ "No. 33724". The London Gazette. 9 June 1931. p. 3758.
- ^ "No. 34238". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 1935. p. 6.
- ^ "No. 34331". The London Gazette. 13 October 1936. p. 6536.
- ^ Lee, Bradford A. (1973). Britain and the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1939. Stanford University Press. pp. 40–41. ISBN 0-8047-0799-5.
- ^ "No. 34607". The London Gazette (Supplement). 14 March 1939. p. 1763.
- ^ Glatz, F.; Glatz, P.F.; Pok, A. (1995). Hungarians and Their Neighbors in Modern Times, 1867–1950. Social Science Monographs. p. 209. ISBN 978-0-88033-316-0.
- ^ Cornelius, Deborah (2011). Hungary in World War II: Caught in the Cauldron. Fordham University Press. p. 258. ISBN 978-0823233441.
- ^ The New York Times 1971.
- ^ Sulzberger, C.L. (1985). World War II. American Heritage. p. 144. ISBN 978-0-8281-0331-2.
- ^ "Mystery of Cicero's victim persists". The Guardian. 1 April 2005.
- ^ Simmons 2014.
- ^ "No. 36811". The London Gazette. 24 November 1944. p. 5393.
- ^ "Ambassador's daughter weds father's secretary who saved her when she was shot in China". British Pathe News. Retrieved 13 September 2021.
- ^ Erickson, H. (2017). Any Resemblance to Actual Persons. McFarland. p. 55. ISBN 978-1-4766-6605-1.
- ^ Operation Cicero at IMDb
References
[edit]- "Sir Hughe Knatchbull‐Hugessen, 'Cicero' Spy Case Victim, Dead". The New York Times. 23 March 1971.
- Simmons, M. (2014). Agent Cicero: Hitler's Most Successful Spy. History Press. ISBN 978-0-7509-5729-8.
