Alexander Wilson (writer and spy)

Alexander Wilson (24 October 1893 – 4 April 1963) was an English writer, spy and MI6 officer.

Early life
Wilson was born in Dover, to an Irish mother and an English father. His father had had a 40-year career in the British Army from 15-year old boy bugler to Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps when he died in 1919. His father served throughout the Boer War, receiving the Queen Victoria and King Edward VII medals. He was mentioned in despatches for his managing and supplying of hospital ships and trains from the Western Front. In the final year of World War I he was responsible for all medical supplies to the British Army in Europe. In his childhood Alexander Wilson's family followed his father to Mauritius, Singapore, Hong Kong and Ceylon. He was educated at St. Joseph's College, Hong Kong and St Boniface's Catholic College in Plymouth where he played amateur soccer.

First World War
He served in the Royal Navy at the start of World War I. A reference in a War Office document indicated he had been in the Royal Naval Air Service and crashed his plane. He was then commissioned in 1915 in the Royal Army Service Corps escorting motor transports and supplies to France. He received disabling injuries to his knee and shrapnel wounds to the left side of his body before being invalided, and received the Silver War Badge. He was in the merchant navy in 1919 serving as a purser on a requisitioned German liner SS Prinzessin, sailing from London to Vancouver via South Africa, China and Japan. In the early 1920s he was actor-manager of a touring repertory company.

Academic and intelligence career in India
In 1925, he left his first wife, Gladys, and three young children in England and went to British India to become Professor of English Literature at Islamia College, the University of Punjab in Lahore (now part of Pakistan). It is believed that, by this time, he already been recruited into the British secret services. While in the post at Lahore, he travelled around the North-West Frontier, learned Urdu and Persian and was appointed an honorary Major in the Indian Army Reserve. During these years, he also spent time in Arabia, Ceylon and Palestine, on what may have been intelligence missions.

He was interviewed and appointed as an English Professor by the then Principal of Islamia College, Abdullah Yusuf Ali (an author, academic and educationalist who went on to translate the Quran, the Holy Book of the Muslim faith). Wilson provided a positive and sympathetic portrait of Abdullah in his second novel The Devil's Cocktail (1928), as the Principal of a fictional Sheranwalla College, Lahore. Wilson succeeded Yusuf Ali as Principal of Islamia College in 1928 until he resigned in 1931 to take up the post of a newspaper editor in the city.

Writing career
In 1928, he published his first spy novel, The Mystery of Tunnel 51, which introduced a character, Sir Leonard Wallace, who appeared in subsequent novels. That same year he also published The Devil's Cocktail. In total, Wilson wrote and published three academic books and 21 novels; he also wrote 4 unpublished manuscripts. The Sir Leonard Wallace character appears closely based on the first 'C' of MI6 Mansfield Smith-Cumming. Wilson's first four books were published by Longmans Green & Co between 1928 and 1931 and in addition to the two spy novels first featuring Sir Leonard Wallace and the British Secret Service, Murder Mansion (1929) and The Death of Dr. Whitelaw were both crime thrillers. In 1933 he published Confessions of a Scoundrel under the pseudonym of Geoffrey Spencer, the same surname used by the first actual 'C' Mansfield Smith-Cumming when renting the MI6 headquarters at 2 Whitehall Court. Wilson was first published by Herbert Jenkins in 1933 and the novels included titles in the Sir Leonard Wallace series and other novels in the crime, romance, comedy and thriller genres. He published under at least one other pseudonym, Gregory Wilson, in 1938 and it would appear his last two novels were published by Herbert Jenkins in 1940.

Second marriage
In India, he met and is believed to have bigamously married a touring actress called Dorothy Wick. When they returned to England, in 1933, Wilson left Dorothy and their baby son Michael in London and returned to his first wife and family, now in Southampton.

However, he stayed with them for only 18 months. In 1935, Wilson moved to London, telling Gladys and family that he would find them a place for them all to live. Instead, he returned to Dorothy.

Third marriage and intelligence career in the World War II
Although there is evidence he was involved in intelligence activities as an agent in the 1920s and 1930s, it is certain that he was in MI6 in 1940, by which time he had left Dorothy and found his third wife, Alison McKelvie, a secretary in MI6. Dorothy's son, the actor and poet Mike Shannon [He changed his name by deed poll] was led to believe that Wilson was killed in the Battle of El Alamein and did not discover the truth until 2006.

In 1942, Wilson told his third wife Alison that he was dismissed from MI6 to go into the field as an agent. He said his subsequent misadventures, including being declared bankrupt, though never discharged, and being jailed for petty crime, were part of the cover he had to adopt for operational reasons.

A recent file release at The National Archives contains the following correspondence on Wilson's dismissal from MI6 and probably explain much of his personality. They also give the lie to the idea of his having been involved in intelligence since the 1920's:

After a considerable amount of careful and delicate investigation we have now reached the conclusion that the activities so attributed to the Ambassador and his reputed agents have in fact been pure fiction. Our reasons for so doing are fully set forth in the attached report which has been shown to “C”, who accepts its conclusions. He has at the same time informed us that the person responsible for the recording of the Arabic material in question left his organisation last October, and this is perhaps some small compensation for the amount of trouble to which his inventive mind has put us all. A fabricator, such as this man was, is a great public danger.

Letter, 26/06/43 from MI5 to Sir Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office.

You will no doubt wish to have the following information about the case. All the conversations which purported to show the Egyptian Ambassador and his circle engaging in intelligence activities were recorded by one member of my section concerned {NAME REDACTED}. This officer joined my organisation in October 1939. He was of course vetted in the usual way. He was taken on as an interpreter in Hindustani, Persian and Arabic, and he passed the usual tests. Another officer of the section concerned who was an examiner in Hindustani, Persian and Arabic and who sat next to him for some time, said that {NAME REDACTED} was the finest natural interpreter he had met. In these circumstances it is not surprising that it was a long time before his translation of conversations were called into question. {NAME REDACTED} was eventually dismissed in October 1942 for reasons entirely unconnected with his work for this office. He was found to have staged a fake burglary in his flat. He has subsequently been in futher serious trouble with the police. {NAME REDACTED}had previously been a professional writer of fiction. When some of his reports were questioned, towards the end of his service here, the possibility that he was embroidering on what he heard was taken into account and he was given a very serious warning that he was not to report what thought was meant in the Egyptian conversations but to keep to the literal translation of the words used. From this time all his reports were carefully scrutinised, and he was questioned constantly to ascertain if he was sure his interpretation was accurate. On no occasion would he admit any doubt.

“C” to Peter Loxley, 1st Secretary, Foreign Office, 18/06/43

Post-war career and fourth marriage
In the mid-1950s, when Wilson was working as a hospital porter, he met and married a nurse, Elizabeth Hill, with whom he also had a child.

Wilson died of a heart attack on 4 April 1963 in Ealing and is buried in Milton cemetery, Portsmouth with a tombstone describing him as an author and patriot and the quotation from Shakespeare's Othello 'He loved not wisely but too well.' The monument is feet away from the grave of fellow MI6 agent Commander Buster Crabb.

Grandchildren
The actress Ruth Wilson is one of his grandchildren. It was only since 2007 that Alexander Wilson's multiple families and descendants began meeting each other for the first time. Ruth discovered that the children of Mike Shannon were also professionals in playwriting, film-making and drama education. Ruth's brother, Sam, a senior BBC journalist, wrote an article in The Times in 2010 that explored the impact of Alexander Wilson's complicated private life on his various families.

Books by Alexander Wilson
Wilson wrote and published three academic books and 21 novels.


 * 1928: The Mystery of Tunnel 51. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
 * 1928: The Devil's Cocktail. Longmans, Green and Co.
 * 1929: Murder Mansion. Longmans, Green and Co.
 * 1930: The Death of Dr. Whitelaw. Longmans, Green and Co.
 * 1933: The Confessions of a Scoundrel under the pseudonym of Geoffrey Spencer. T Werner Laurie.
 * 1933: The Crimson Dacoit. Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1933: Wallace of the Secret Service. Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1934: Get Wallace! Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1934: The Sentimental Crook. Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1935: The Magnificent Hobo. Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1936: His Excellency, Governor Wallace. Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1937: Microbes of Power. Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1937: Mr Justice. Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1937: Double Events. Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1938: Wallace At Bay. Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1938: The Factory Mystery as 'Gregory Wilson.' Modern Publishing Company.
 * 1938: The Boxing Mystery as 'Gregory Wilson.' Modern Publishing Company.
 * 1939: Wallace Intervenes. Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1939: Scapegoats for Murder. Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1940: Chronicles of the Secret Service. Herbert Jenkins.
 * 1940: Double Masquerade. Herbert Jenkins.