HELEN FRY

"Congratulations on the best deserved OBE of the war" - Norman Crockatt, Head of MI9 (Letter to Kendrick)

Thomas Joseph Kendrick was one of the British Secret Service’s most senior spymasters in the 20th century. From tracking Communist agents across Europe in the 1920s to Nazi spies in the 1930s, he was placed as SIS head of station in Vienna, at the heart of European espionage.

​

In Vienna he crossed paths with the British spy and (later) traitor Kim Philby and Communist Edith Tudor-Hart, figures that would go on to rock the British Secret Service for decades. Kendrick had entered the dangerous world of German double agents and foreign spies. Dubbed ‘the elusive Englishman' by Hitler’s Secret Service, his real identity baffled the Abwehr, until he was finally denounced by a double agent. 

​

Kendrick's arrest by the Gestapo and ‘Soviet-style’ interrogation caused panic in Whitehall as the whole the European network of British spies was at risk.

​

The Spymaster refused to give up the SIS network. Kendrick was unceremoniously thrown out of Austria... but not before he had saved the lives of 25,000+ Austrian Jews. 

​

He went on to lead the longest ever recorded Bugging Operation on Nazi Germany.

​

Helen's book also shows the extensive connections Kendrick had, including a new link to the British Royal Family.