The form requesting information about Lee Miller Courtesy of The National Archives
The 22nd Security Service release has opened up 60 files to the public and includes files on a number of well-known figures including Vogue photographer Lee Miller and actress Mai Zetterling.
Available from the National Archives the documents include personal files, policy files, organisation files and list files detailing German intelligence agents and officers, communists, Soviet agents and officers, right wing extremists, Czech refugees and many others.
The files cover the time periods from before during and after the Second World War and are free to download for the next month offering an interesting insight into how individuals were monitored by the British Security Services.
Celebrated Vogue model, photographer and journalist Lee Miller worked as a photographer in Britain during the Second World War and an unnamed colleague at Vogue outed her as a communist supporter in 1941.
The file reports that Miller's communist beliefs were idealistic rather than subversive and although a watch was kept on her activities there were no concerns that Miller posed a threat.
Other details on the file include details of Miller's marriage to left wing artist Roland Penrose and also quotes a Mr Yoxall, from Vogue publishers Conde Nast, noting that Miller is eccentric and indulges in queer foods and queer clothes etc.
Swedish actress Mai Zetterling also crops up in the Communist section of the reports first coming to the attention of the Security Services in 1952.
At this time, reports noted that she was ‘increasing her interests in Communism,’ and noted occasional traces of her activities over the next six years, during which time it was recorded that the actress was the mistress of Herbert Lom and then Tyrone Power.
In November 1956, Zetterling was noted as being ‘upset emotionally by reports from Hungary, but too busy to weigh up her options,’ and her file ends with her marriage to David Hughes in 1958.
Mai Zetterling Courtesy of The National Archives
The case of Alexander Ionescu shows how the Secret Service identified possible double agents for use against the Russians following the Second World War.
Ionescu was a highly regarded civil pilot and approached by the NKVD (Russian secret police) to spy on Britain when he flew the Romanian delegation to the 1945 Youth Congress to London.
He first came to the attention of the UK Security Services when he was working for the SOE in Romania and met Colonel de Chastelaine, whose help he later sought to defect to the West.
Further details in the file include the discussion of plans to use Ionescu as a double agent to feed back information to the NKVD, however the plans were never carried out.
He left the UK after the Congress but returned in 1947 setting himself up as an engineer in Colliers Wood, London.
A second file reveals a bizarre turn of events, beginning with a letter to the Home Office in 1956 from a Mr Fred Donovan who claimed that Ionescu had 'alienated his wife’s affection's. Donovan asked for help in removing the Romanian from the UK.
The Home Office declined to take up the case and sadly for Mr Donovan, matters came to an unpleasant end when Ionescu and Mrs Eunice Donovan, plus her two adopted children, left Britain for Romania.
Alexander Ionescu Courtesy of The National Archives
The file ends with a brief account of a phone call made by a distressed Mrs Donovan two weeks after her arrival in Bucharest saying she wished to come home.
A further curious case released in the latest round of security files is of professional actor and Canterbury antiques dealer Ralph Dawson and his association with the British Union of Fascists during the Second World War.
Despite saying he would never fight the Germans on foreign soil he was posted to Dunkirk in the hope he would incriminate other sympathisers, but he was later interned.
He was eventually released on a technicality but police searched him in Canterbury and found him in possession of a membership certificate for the 'Moseley Fight 'Em All Association.'
He was detained again but later released on compassionate grounds when his mother fell ill. He was placed on the 'invasion list' and the Secret Service intercepted correspondence and reports of meetings he attended.
All the files released can be downloaded for free for the next month by visiting www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
