LIONEL HARRIS (1862-1943) His Life, History and large Family

February 2, 2010

Post originally published 27th November 2009 – Updated 2/2/2010 – changes in green

LIONEL HARRIS (1862-1943) – ENRIQUETA RODRIGUEZ LEON (1873-1933) AND FAMILY

Lionel’s father was called William Harris. He was born in 1828, apparently in Germany, and died on the 3^rd April 1907. William was soon living with other Harrises in London however, and he married Eve Barnett on the 21^st November 1860 at the New Synagogue, Great St Helens, according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the German and Polish Jews.[1] Eve had been born in January 1841 and was the daughter of Abraham Barnett, Reader at the Synagogue at the time and later Minister.[2]

The Harrises in question are usually thought to have been of Russian or Polish origin: a family of the Jewish faith which settled in the East End of London and the City in the early years of the 19^th century.[3] William’s father seems to have been called Levy, and there was no lack of Harrises and Barnetts living in Great Prescott Street in the 19^th century. Lionel was born in that street, where William and Eve were living (at Nº 14) when the 1861 census was taken. William at that time was a general merchant, according to his marriage certificate.

William and Eve had a typically large 19^th-century family. Lionel was the eldest son, according to the 1871 census, born in 1862. He was followed by Ernest, Eltaet? (a daughter), Morris, Violet, Stella and Norah according to the 1871 census, when the family had moved up in the world and were living at 43, Woburn Place with four servants. William was now a Diamond Merchant. There was at least one other daughter later, called Gertrude, whom Lionel mentioned in his will and who presumably died after him.[4]

Lionel’s life and career are not too difficult to document. In 1898, at the age of 35, he married Enriqueta Rodríguez y León (born Seville 7^th June 1873 and died 3^rd November 1933 in London), whose father was Tomás Rodríguez de García, and whose mother was Concepción León y Gallardo from Seville. Lionel and Enriqueta were betrothed in 1895, and married in the Registry Office of the British Consulate in Madrid on the 21^st February 1898. The marriage was solemnized in the Synagogue at Bayonne by the Chief Rabbi of that city on the 30^th March the same year. The Rodríguez family had some bull-fighting antecedents but Lionel’s in-laws made their living selling antiques in Madrid in the 1890s. At the time of his marriage Lionel was also already established in the antiques trade. [5]

Lionel had earlier, in the 1880s presumably, joined his father in South America to work in the textile business. It was William, apparently, who suggested that his son should move to Spain, and he can first be located in the Spanish capital in 1891.[6] when he was trading as a diamond merchant (like his father), together with Alfred Lindenbaum in Madrid and London. In 1892 his letterhead gives his business addresses in both Madrid and London,but he was no longer in diamonds, and was dealing instead in antiques, art and jewellery. L. Harris & Co. was at Fuencarral, 24, Pr[incip]al D[e]r[ech]a in Madrid and 35 Hatton Gardens in London in the year in question. By 1896 his Madrid address had changed to Caballero de Gracia, 22, principal, and he had separate addresses for Antiques and Jewellery in London, at 127 Regent Street (with the telegraphic address BARMASTER),[7] and at 23 Hatton Gardens (telegraphic address BRAWRONIA) respectively. In March 1898 his Madrid address was Carmen, 4, 1º izq[uier]da, and his London addresses remained unchanged.[8] Since a diamond merchant called William Harris is listed in Hatton Gardens in the Post Office Directories of the period, it is not impossible that this was Lionel’s father’s business address.

In Lionel’s early business activity in Madrid and London, it is evident that he needed the support of partners, and often changed them. He dissolved the partnership with Lindenbaum in 1891 and we have yet to discover when it had started. Subsequently he went into partnership with Solomon Joseph as Dealers in Works of Art and Antiquities at 127 Regent Street, trading as Harris & Co., and this arrangement was dissolved in 1898. Later, in 1905, a certain solicitor called George Solomon Joseph (very possibly Lionel’s former partner) is mentioned in The Times in a case where Lionel Harris himself was also involved, as executor of the estate of Louis Jephson of Brighton, whose will had been challenged. It seems that Solomon Joseph was a cousin of the deceased Jephson and that Lionel was a relation too .[10]

Despite the need for the backing of others, the ability of Lionel to build up his stock, extracting silver articles and other valuables from ecclesiastical and monastic sources in Spain in the 1890s can be gauged from the 18 items he exhibited in a Spanish Art Exhibition held at the New Gallery in London in 1896, which also included 16^th– and 17^th-century embroideries and jewellery, rugs, and vases from his stock. But he moved his main company base to London around 1900, although he continued to travel regularly in Spain to acquire art and antiques for the next few decades. His family also flourished. Lionel and Enriqueta’s first child, Violeta, was born in London in November or December 1898 and Maurice, their second child, was born in London in 1900. The family were living with four servants at 21 Lymington Road, Hampstead when the 1901 Census was taken,[9] and in that year Lionel’s business address was 44 Conduit Street, off Bond Street in London. The following year he was listed at 32 St James’ Street SW, in the Post Office directory of the period, and by 1909 his company was also to be found at 50 Conduit Street. , in 1907 he opened The Spanish Gallery at 50 Conduit Street with an exhibition of works by the Catalan artist Josep Cusachs. The Spanish Ambassador attended the opening, since the embassy had commissioned an equestrian portrait of the young king Alfonso XIII, in military uniform, by Cusachs, which was on display. Presumably Lionel thought that the time was ripe to capitalise on his Spanish connections, since the good relations between Spain and Britain had been cemented by the marriage of King Alfonso in May 1906 to a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Princess Ena of Battenberg [9b]

By 1911 five more children had been born to Lionel and his wife: three sons –William in 1902; Lionel Junior in 1903; Tomás Joseph in 1909 1908 ; and two daughters, Conchita in 1904; and Enriqueta Eva in 1910. The 1911 census shows that there were now six servants to support the growing family.[10]

Lionel’s art and antiques trading prospered. He was selling early 16^th-century alabaster effigies, a large collection of ironwork, a Gothic figure, and Hispano-Moresque vases to the recently founded Hispanic Society of America in New York in the course of 1906, having offered a Spanish Apocalypse to them unsuccessfully in August 1901, and other purchases from Lionel were made by the same Society in the years up to and including 1914. The Victoria and Albert Museum purchased late 15^th-century sepulchral sculptures from his firm in 1910 and he sold rare textiles and carpets and other works to them between that date and 1920.[11] In the years before World War I, Lionel’s dealing in early Spanish paintings and El Greco also took off. The Mass of St Gregory from the School of Fernando Gallego, was bought from Lionel for the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in 1910 and an anonymous St Michael of the Valencian School was acquired by the National Gallery of Scotland from him the same year.[12] The premises The Spanish Art Gallery at 50 Conduit Street became The Spanish Art Gallery at this period, admired by such art luminaries as Roger Fry, who wrote a strong appraisal of the originality of El Greco’s art for the Burlington Magazine in 1913, basing his opinions largely on four paintings by the master which Lionel then had on show.

By the 1920s, Lionel’s sons were old enough to help their father with his business. Maurice Harris joined his father as a Director before 1921, probably at both the Spanish Art Gallery and 44 Conduit Street, known as the Kent Gallery Ltd. and so did Lionel Junior (the third of the four sons, born in 1903).[13] The second son William may also have worked with his father too, but seems not to have become a director, and at some stage moved to Caernafon in Wales to run an antiques business of his own.[14]

It was in the late 1920s that Lionel’s youngest son, Tomás, decided to follow his father into art dealing, and he had galleries of his own first in Sackville Street and then at 29 Bruton Street before joining Lionel at the Spanish Art Gallery which he later moved to Garden Lodge, Logan Place, Kensington, W8.[15] Tomás had won a scholarship at the Slade School of Art when he was only fifteen and was trained as an artist there from 1923 to 1926, spending a year subsequently at the British Academy in Rome. Although he had a prodigious talent and continued to paint and exhibit his work throughout his life, the family’s dealing in works of art stimulated his interest in collecting too. He began by seeking out prints and drawings by the two Tiepolos, Dürer and Rembrandt, and then turned his attention to Goya., building up an unrivalled collection of the various editions of the Spanish artist’s major series of prints and lithographs, and studying rare states of the etchings. In his will, Lionel made it plain that Tomás was uniquely suited to run the gallery,[16] and the exceptional quality of the two exhibitions he organised in the 1930s, with major works by Velázquez, Ribera, Zurbarán and Goya and little known works from private collections, showed that he had the ability to develop the business further.[17]Lionel’s own quality and reputation as a dealer was obvious in the 1930s. In an interview with him published in The Evening Standard in July 1938 he was compared to Duveen, although in reality in the field of Spanish art he seems to have outdone all his international rivals, since there is clear evidence that he had handled more important works by Spanish artists than any other dealer in the catalogue of Spanish Paintings outside Spain published by Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño in Madrid in 1958. Yet although Tomás and Maurice were actively trying to sell work from their father’s stock to major museums in the post-war period, it has been said that Tomás was ‘evidently trying to wind up his business’ then.[18] And it may be that the stimulus to create, fostered by his house in Majorca, and his Goya collecting and the preparation of his Goya print catalogue left little time for dealing and selling.

[Tomás’s Goya print collection, part of it now available for study in the British Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings thanks to the generosity of his widow and his sisters, although the gift was also in lieu of estate duties,[19] and his two volume Goya Prints and Lithographs (Oxford, Bruno Cassirer, 1964) have made a major contribution to the understanding of Goya’s etching and lithographic techniques, and have greatly increased the general appreciation of that part of the Spanish artist’s work. But historians may well be hard pressed to weigh the significance of his work as artist, collector and scholar, against the importance of his work for MI 5 during World War II, since he was the individual responsible for much of the planning and control of the Double Agent known as Garbo, and invented himself many of the spurious reports sent to this agent (and thence to the German High Command) from Garbo’s imaginary network of spies, creating an ingenious web of deceptions, that succeeded in keeping the Germans in the dark about the intended D-Day landings. Tomás wrote his own account of his role as Garbo’s full-time case officer in a series of World War II double bluffs, now in the National Archives at Kew, available in print with the title Garbo, the spy who saved D-day (London, Public Record Office, 2000).[20]

[1]Marriage Certificate from the Registration District of the City of London. Certified copy obtained on the 28^th October 2002. The fact that William was born in Germany is mentioned in the 1871 census in an entry identified by Morlin.

[2]Birth Certificate from the Registration District of East London and the sub-district of St Botolph. Certified copy obtained 29^th October 2002.

[3]See Jeffrey Maynard, The History of the Bloom and Harris families (1989). Copy in the Local History Library in Bancroft Road, London E 1.

[4]Copy of the will supplied by the Probate Registry in High Holborn, originally registered at Llandudno. Probate was granted to Lionel’s son-in-law Ephraim Wolff, married to his daughter Conchita (whose given name was presumably inspired by that of her Spanish grandmother).

[5]Information about the Spanish side of the family from Dr Enriqueta Harris Frankfort. Lionel and Enriqueta Rodríguez’s marriage certificate could be found in the Overseas Marriages 1896-1900 section in the Family Records Centre in 2002. The entry in the Madrid registry, vol. 10 fol. 891, was photocopied for Nigel Glendinning in 2002 at the Family Record Centre and given to Enriqueta Harris.

[6]Information given in an article in the Evening Standard July 9, 1938, known from a photocopy formerly in the possession of Enriqueta Harris Frankfort. with additional material from The London Gazette discovered by Morlin.

[7]The term Barmaster is apparently used of local judges in mines who assess the quality of ore extracted.

[8]Information from letters written by Lionel to his father, formerly in the possession of Dr. Enriqueta Harris Frankfort.

[9]Transcript of the entry for the family in the census obtained by Morlin.

[9b] Information from the archives of The Times obtained by Morlin . It seems that 44 Conduit Street had been called The Spanish Art Gallery as early as 1898, when the Empress Frederick visited it one afternoon in December that year, according to The Times.

[10]Transcript obtained by Morlin .

[11]Information from research in the Victoria & Albert Museum archives by Dr Marjorie Trusted and her colleagues.

[12]See Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, Catalogue of Paintings, I, Dutch Flemish French German Spanish, Cambrudge, 1960, Nº 708, pp. 210-211; and Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño, La pintura española fuera de España, Madrid, Espasa Calpe, 1958, Nº 56.

[13]Information deduced from research on works sold to the V & A carried out by Dr Marjorie Trusted. The prosperity of the family in the 1920s was marked by the move of their private residence from Lymington Road to the far grander Fitzjohns Avenue.

[14]It should be possible to establish further information about William in Wales starting from the recollections of those who knew him there, such as members of the family of Morlin , and Professor David Davies, who may additionally be able to throw further light on his relations with Enriqueta and other members of the Harris family.

[15]See Anthony Blunt’s article on Tomás in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1961-1970, Oxford University Press, 1981, p. 493.

[16]A copy of the will obtained from the Probate registry in Holborn in 2002 shows that Lionel knew that the assets of his business had been deprived of their true value by the war and the depression that preceded it, but hoped that they would recover their worth when the war was over. When he made his will he was particularly concerned to look after the female members of his family, although he also wished to continue to support the children of his son William: Gordon, Ronald and David, and a granddaughter called Maureen, who is yet to be identified. His estate was valued for probate at £56, 222 and 16 shillings, a not inconsiderable sum if multiplied by the appropriate factor to give an equivalent in today’s money.

[17]See An Exhibition of Old Masters by Spanish Artists at the Galleries of Tomas Harris Ltd, 29, Bruton Street, London W 1 (June 1931) and From Greco to Goya, Tomas Harris Ltd, The Spanish Art Gallery. 6, Chesterfield Gardens, 1938. The family seem to have lived at Chesterfield Gardens in the Mayfair area during the war, and it was presumably there that Tomás and his wife Hilda gave famously lively parties for their arty and secret service friends.

[18]Observation of Dr Marjorie Trusted.

[19]Information from Morlin based on references in the National Archives to the gift of Goya prints.

[20]See Javier Juárez, Juan Pujol, el espía que derrotó a Hitler, Madrid, 2004; and Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm. The Authorized History of MI 5, London, Allen Lane, 2009.

Many Thanks to Nigel Glendinning (Professor of art history at London University) for sending us the above document about my Harris Family. Nigel was good friend with Tomas Harris, and has known Enriqueta Harris for many years, right up until her death in 2006.

Anthony Blunt – Wrote many published articles about his MI5 colleague and good friend – Tomas Harris

January 31, 2010

My research has led me to many articles written by Anthony Blunt about his good friend and colleague – the Late Tomas Harris (my grandfathers brother). Anthony Blunt wrote many tributes to Tomas for newspapers and Exhibition catalogues. Anthony Blunt was also good friends with Tomas’s sister Enriqueta Harris.

<— View details of article written by Anthony Blunt the week after Tomas’s death in the car accident in Mallorca

1975-tomas-harris-courtauld-exhibition-catalogue-anthony-blunt-intro-1

View Blunts introduction about Tomas Harris in the catalogue produced for the Tomas Harris 1975 Art Exhibition at the Courtauld Institute —>

View Another Anthony Blunt article about Tomas Harris <— (Please note that article tells that Tomas designed and built his house in Camp de Mar in Mallorca, this is not correct – He purchased the house and renovated it – see photos of house before and after renovation in the Camp de Mar Gallery)

Anthony Blunt was Knighted in 1956 and awarded an honorary fellowship at Trinity College. In 1978, while a distinguished Art historian at the Courtauld institute, he was stripped of his knighthood and removed as an Honary member of Trinity college because his role as a Soviet Spy during the war had become exposed.

Blunt <– Wiki link was a Warburg Institute professor; director of the Courtauld Institute and professor at the University of London, before and after the war. He specialised in French and Italian Art. Enriqueta Harris, Tomas’s sister, specialised in Spanish Art, and had also worked at the Courtauld Institute. Henri Frankfort had become director of the Warburg Institute in London in 1948, and married Enriqueta Harris who worked at the Courtauld Institute just two years before he died in 1954.

Blunt had spent five years serving in MI5 during the war and was lavishly entertained (along with Guy Burgess, David Liddell and Kim Philby) at the Mayfair and Logan Place residences of Tomas and his wife Hilda. Blunt was interviewed by Nigel West, author of GARBO, in May 1981, during which he informed Nigel West that in 1944 he had been introduced to GARBO (MI5’s double spy) by Tomas Harris (Garbos MI5 controller) over dinner at a restaurant in Jermyn Street in London.

Blunt was a member of the group known as the Cambridge Five <– Wiki Link . Wikipedia states that the five names refer to the fact that all members became committed Communists while attending Cambridge University in the 1930s..

Sir Anthony Blunt writes about Tomas Harris, the Artist and MI5 officer.

November 29, 2009

MR TOMAS HARRIS – SPANISH ART

In 1964, Sir Anthony Blunt wrote :-

Mr. Tomas Harris, who was killed in a road accident in Majorca on Monday(27th January 1964), was well known to evryone in the art world in London and Madrid. His father Lionel Harris, founded the Spanish Art Galleries more than half a century ago and although Tomas himself wanted to become a painter, and won a scholarship to the Slade at the age of 16, he abandoned this career in order to join the firm and help his father.

Almost every important work of art to come from Spain to England during the half-century went through the hands of either the father or the son and one could be certain at any time of seeing in the galleries, masterpieces by El Greco or the other great Spanish painters, as well as carpets and other objects of art of the particlualr kinds in which Spain was so rich. Tomas had an uncanny instinct for discovering works of art in unexpected places, and one of his most important acquisitions a series of fifteenth-century German panels which had once been in the National Gallery – were bought among the contents of an outhouse at a country sale. To his energy and acumen were added the most rigid integrity in all matters of business and the greatest generosity in questions of scholarship: his pictures and his great knowledge were available to the humblest student as well as to the expert or potential buyer.

During the war he ws attached to the War office (in MI5) where his special qualifications and his astonishing imagination enabled him to do work of the highest value to the Allied cause, which won him great commendation from those in high places who were in a position to judge it.

After the war instead of returning to the art trade he devoted himself to painting and held successful exhibitions in London, New York, Madrid and Barcelona. For his last 10 years he lived mainly in Majorca and devoted much time to the scholarship of art history. He lived long enough to witness the triumpant success of the exhibition of etchings by Goya which he organized at the British Museum, almost entirely from the resources of his own collection and to see the first rough copy of his complete catalogue of these etchings which is due to be published in the near future and which will revolutionize our idea of Goya’s acheivment as an engraver.

TOMAS HARRIS from MI5. GARBO his Spy (Double Agent), MI6/SIS and Espionage in World War II, better than Fiction..

November 27, 2009

—————— LINKS —————–

(D-Day 6/6/1944) – (view Link)

Marks the start of Europe invasion in Normandy, France – during World War II

MI5 (view Link)

was responsible for counter-espionage intelligence within the UK

MI6/SIS (view Link)

Secret Intelligence service for counter-espionage intelligence in foreign countries.

Garbo (view Post)

Spanish Agent Worked as a Double Spy for MI5 in Britain, when the Germans were so convinced he was a German spy, that they awarded him the Iron Cross

Tomas Harris (view Post)

MI5 Case Officer/Controller who worked with GARBO to create the GARBO network of 27 imaginary spies who mislead the Germans into thinking the invasion would occur in Calais instead of on the Normandy beachheads.

Anthony Blunt (view Post)

at MI5 B1(b)- An Art historian workedduring the war, who was knighted then suspected of being a Soviet spy Agent which resulted in his knighthood being annulled.

GARBO – Juan Pujol Garcia (1912-1988)

November 26, 2009

GARBO

Juan Pujol was born in Spain and spoke no English when the war began. He was code named ARABEL by the Germans in 1941 and was code named GARBO by MI5 in 1942. The Head of MI5’s double agents division was Tomas Harris who was educated in Spain and spoke Spanish like a native. They worked very closely together in MI5 (B1(g) from 1942 until the end of the war.

1912 – GARBO (Juan Pujol Garcia) was born in Barcelona, on the 14th February 1912. His mother, a Garcia, was from Granada. His father (a Pujol) was from Gerona and a true Catalan through and through. Juan Pujol had one brother and two sisters. His brothers hobbies included photography and stamp collecting.

1940 – MI5 had recruited 8 double agents, who had all originally come to the UK as German spies and been caught, interrogated threatened with a choice between the death penalty and clemency if they co-operated with MI5, and were ‘turned’ into British double spies to spy on the Germans, and all the while the Germans continued to think that nothing had changed. This process became known as the Double Cross System, an elaborate secret campaign that resulted in the arrest of every German agent sent to the UK.

1940/Apr – Juan Pujol(Garbo) married Araceli Gonzalez in Madrid

1941 – MI5 moved to a new base, Latchmore House – that was a nursing Home, and became known as Camp 20. (Twenty is XX in roman numerals, which was an abbreviation for double cross). All agents were now supplied case officers.

1941/Jan – Juan Pujol(Garbo’s) wife approached the British consulate, offered her husbands services as a spy in either Italy or Germany, and because it was not taken seriously the rebuff Juan was determined to initiate contact on his own, which would not be difficult as Spain under Franco was firmly in the Nazi camp. It took 3 attempts with the German Embassy until he was taken seriously and informed that if he could get himself to Britain they might be interested in using him as spy for Germany.

1941/Apr – Juan left Madrid for Portugal where he created a forged a diplomatic passport and tried to get an entry visa for the UK without success. So he returned to Madrid

1941 – Juan Pujol madecontact witha German, Frederico, and managed to convince him, with lies and half truths about connections with the Spanish security Police and Foreign office, along with misleading telegrams from his ‘contacts’ in Lisbon, of his bona fides. So Pujolwas given a crash course in secret writing and with money and invisible ink from the Germans, went back to Lisbon with his wife, now as an official spy with plans to get to London. Again though he was rebuffed by the British Embassy in Lisbon, so he elected to develop his work further as a German agent and secure more proof of his position within the intelligence apparatus.

1941/July – Juan wrote letters to Frederico with the invisible ink, pretending to be in England, and pretending to send the letters via a non-existent KLM pilot from Britain to Portugal. MI5 then intercepted these letters when they were transmitted between Madrid and Berlin by the Abwehr (German military intelligence and counter-intelligence service) and were cause for concern to MI5 as they seemed authentic, substantial and plausible.

1941/Aug – Pujol began reporting to the Germans, that he had begun to develop connections, and recruited two sub-agents. Thinking this produced enough evidence to be accepted by the British authorities in Madrid, but was again rebuffed. Now beginning to worry about blowing his cover he thought the United States (although at this time still neutral), might find him of some use.

1941/Oct – MI5 were now all ready to search for a new ‘special’ double agent and heard rumours that a German agent had slipped through the net and was in Britain. MI5 (Anthony Blunt) analysed ISOS messages received by the Germans from what seemed to be a German Spy in England and tried to locate him. Tomas Harris now head of B1(g) determined that he was a Spaniard, actually still in Portugal, pretending to be in England.

1941/Nov – Pujol was reaching the point of despair. He applied for visas to emigrate to brazil with his wife and child. His wife (without Pujol’sknowledge) contacted the US Embassy, with information about a Spaniard working as a German agent and asked for $200,000 for them to take her seriously. Her information included invisible ink, letters, espionage paraphernalia, and a micro photo of one of the German questionnaires.

1942/Jan – Britain and the US were now firm allies so the US Embassy decided to represent the Spaniard with the British Authorities as a result of Pujol’swife contacts with them.

1942/Feb – So when Juan made a third attempt in Portugal to make contact with the British S.I.S. via the American Embassy in Lisbon, to try to get them notice him as a potential double cross agent, it was finally successful. He now had German contacts who believed he had real British contacts that were giving him valuable confidential information, and contacts in KLM who were transporting letters from Britain to Portugal when in fact his letters were originating in Portugal.

1942-March MI5 and MI6(SIS) both wanted control of Pujol. MI6 wanted to control him in Lisbon, and MI5 sought to exploit him from the UK. This highlighted the need to amalgamate SIS’s counter-espionage section with MI5’s B Division. Tomas Harris from MI5 realised the urgent need to infiltrate Pujol from Lisbon, secretly to avoid discovery. This urgency resulted in Gene Risso-Gill a very well connected Portuguese working for MI6 in Lisbon, finally smuggling Juan, via Gibraltar to London by air (in top secret so the Germans would not discover that he was not already in England) . He arrived in the UK 24th April 1942

1942/April – On cold Spring day, one Juan never forgot, he arrived in London and was welcomed by Tomas, as he was head of B1(g) in MI5 and the only Spanish speaking controller. He was assigned to Juan Paulo (then known to the Germans as ARABEL). Juan knew then that they would be colleagues and good friends (Tomas was later known to Garbo as Tommy) . He was taken to a processing center for new arrivals and then on to a safe house at 35 Crespigny Road in Hendon. After a debriefing lasting several days by SIS Section V, Pujol stated his willingness to engage in deception stratagems providing his family be brought to the UK to join him.

GARBO totally trusted Tomas (later to be known to him as Tommy) from the day he first arrived in the UK and in his book he described him as a ‘great friend’ and a ‘hard working colleague’ .

THE INVASION of EUROPE – began on D-Day – (D-Day 6/6/1944) – This date marks the start of invasion of Europe in Normandy, France

1942-1944 During the war Garbo and Tomas schemed and planned together to confuse the Germans over the time, the place and the magnitude of the attack which would inevitably be the start of the end of World War II. Together they invented more than 27 fictional German agents (The GARBO Network) , and wrote about 315 letters containing hidden paragraphs written in invisible ink and from the start of 1944 over 500 coded wireless messages were exchanged between London and Madrid (and forwarded to Berlin), all 1) To deceive the Germans into believing that the Allies were gathering in Scotland and N, Ireland to land in Norway, AND 2) To mislead the Germans into drawing a wrong conclusion from the false information received, that the cross channel assault was to occur in Pas de Calais, Northern France instead of in Normandy. As a result of their confusion they built an Atlantic wall of coastal defenses and had all their armed forces in the wrong locations. Even when the Germans were informed (intentionally late, by Garbo) that the Normandy landings had begun, the Germans were successfully led to believe (by Garbo) that the Normandy landings were just a diversionary tactic by the Allies, and the Calais attack was still to come. It never did!

The Invasion of Europe was on a massive scale. The build up of British and American resources in the United Kingdom rose to more than 3,000,000 men, a huge fleet of warships, merchantmen and landing craft and 13,000 aircraft.

1944- Britain awarded Garbo an MBE

1944/June – MI5 also embraced campaigns in North Africa and the V-weaon offensives.

1944/June 30th- Garbo received instructions from the Germans to investigate and give the co-ordinates of precisely where the V1 flying bombs were landing in London, so that the Germans could make adjustments and improve their aim. While bureaucrats and politiciansfumbled with the moral issues of lying or telling the truth about the bomb site locations which would/would not redirect the flying bombs from one part of London to another, Tomas came up with a solution. The plan was for Garbo to undertake the instructions from the enemy and then vanish for a few days and then report to the Germans that he had been arrested and held in custody, while suspiciously investigating the scene of a bomb site. Predictably the Germans instructed Garbo to curtail his activities and so Tomas and Garbo took a two week holiday! and moved from Hendon to a small hotel in Bray, in Berkshire. It was owned by a Spanish couple from Valencia named Terrades and he then commuted to London from Taplow to work at MI5’s little front office in Jermyn Street

1944/July 29th – Garbo received congratulations from Germany, because he was advised that the Fuerher has conceded the Iron Cross to him, for his extraordinary merits. But it wasn’t before many bureaucratic obstacles were overcome, that in December the Iron Cross could actually be awarded to someone who was not a regular member of the armed forces. No such problems arose when questions arose about awarding Garbo withan MBE (an honorary award of membership of the order of the British Empire), by Tomas Harris, who was himself decorated with the CBE for his role in the GARBO case).

1944/September 8th – The deadly V2’s began to fall, and once again Garbo was asked to give the locations of where they landed. After giving false information Garbo odds at getting exposed increased greatly, and after a scare of being exposed by an Abwehr defector, MI5 decided he should go to ground. His last message to the Germans was to inform them that he would try to go to South America by boat as soon as possible.

1945/May 7th- London exploded with Joy, people invaded Piccadilly and Regent Street and traffic came to a standstill. Everyone was drinking, singing and dancing to celebrate the arrival of peace. The MI5 office was disbanded, and the team broke up.

1945/June – Garbo and Tommy left the UK for the US. MI5 were determined to look after GARBO right to the end. MI5 gave Garbo £15,000 as reward for his work. Garbo had an interview with J Edgar Hoover, the boss of the FBI, but didn’t get the job. Garbo went to Cuba, Mexico and other countries in South America to find a safe and comfortable place to settle down. He finally chose Venezuela, Caracas. Then he went to visit his family in Barcelona, and then to Madrid to meet up with Tommy and MI6. Garbo then arranged to meet with his German contacts in Spain for a final time, and then returned to Lisbon to meet Tommy again. Meeting his German contacts had been Garbo’s final proof that his double identity as GARBO-ARABEL had been an impeccably kept secret right to the very end.

1945/ Garbo retired to Caracas, Venezuela, Garbo and Tomas kept in touch after the war.

1948 – Garbo visited Tommy in Mallorca at his villa, in Camp de Mar, where he was living with his wife Hilda until he died in 1964. Tommy informed him he had written a book about all their MI5 activities, and that he had kept a copy for Garbo for his own memoirs. Garbo needed the memoirs kept secret as he still needed protection from the Nazis, he also asked Tommy to tell anyone asking after him that Garbo had ‘died’.

1955 – Oliver Campell (Shell Fiancial controller) met Juan Pujo in Lagunillas, on the east coast of lake Maracaibo, Venezuela. Garbo was teaching Spanish at Shell to expatriots and their spouses.

1959 – Tomas Harris had spread a rumour to protect Garbo living in Venezuela, that he had died of Malaria in Angola in 1959.

1971 – Oliver Campell paid Juan Pujol for a gift in a shop where Juan was working in a commercial center in Caracass.

1985 – Garbo was persuaded to make a sentimental return to London and come out of hiding from Venezuela. It was time for his family to learn about his past..

All his German contacts from during the war were now dead so it was safe to travel again. He met his former colleagues from MI5 and MI6 and received formal recognition for the nations debt to him in the form of an audience at Buckingham Palace and was introduced to HRH royal Duke of Edinburgh.

1988 – Garbo died in Caracas.

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Tomas Harris (view Post)

Anthony Blunt (view Post)

at MI5 B1(b)- An Art historian workedduring the war, who was knighted then suspected of being a Soviet spy Agent which resulted in his knighthood being annulled.