Maxwell Knight: The MI5 Agent Runner Who Became a BBC Nature Broadcaster

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Maxwell Knight, born in 1900, served briefly as a hydrophone officer in the Royal Naval Reserve in 1918, listening for U-boat propellers, then worked as a prep school teacher and freelance journalist. In 1924 Sir George Makgill, who ran a private intelligence network feeding MI5, recruited him and had him join the British Fascisti, where he rose to director of intelligence by 1930. Knight used fascist members to infiltrate the Communist Party of Great Britain. MI6 took on him and his network in 1929, and in 1931, when domestic counter-espionage was consolidated under MI5, he became head of section B5(b), running agents from residential flats rather than headquarters, eventually from Dolphin Square.

Knight recruited women at a time when they were considered unsuited for espionage. Olga Gray penetrated the communist leadership and Joan Miller worked inside antisemitic fascist networks. His section broke up the Right Club and caught Tyler Kent, an American embassy code clerk copying Churchill-Roosevelt cables, and Anna Wolkoff, and he rose to major with an OBE. His record also included the framing of activist Ben Greene by an agent provocateur and claims that he tipped off William Joyce, later Lord Haw-Haw. His warning paper on Comintern infiltration was dismissed, Roger Hollis among the doubters. Angina pushed him out of MI5 in 1956, and he turned to natural history, writing 34 books and presenting BBC programs before his death in 1968.

• He was married three times, and none of the marriages was consummated.
• At home he kept snakes, monkeys and birds, and he wrote a book about his pet cuckoo, Goo.
• Joan Miller later alleged occult involvement and hidden homosexuality, claims his biographer and third wife disputed.
• A memorial fund for young naturalists set up after his death was championed by David Attenborough.
• In 2015 researchers found his unpublished manuscript The Frightened Face of Nature, warning of pollution and habitat loss.