Alexander Wilson (writer and spy)
Encyclopedia
Alexander Wilson was an English writer who was also an officer for MI6, definitely during World War II but possibly working for Indian Political Intelligence and the Indian Intelligence Bureau as early as the late 1920s.
to an Irish mother and an English father, who had a 40 year career in the British army from 15 year old boy bugler to Colonel in the RAMC (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 College in Plymouth
where he played amateur soccer.
at the start of the Great War. 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.
, the University of Punjab in Lahore
(now part of Pakistan). It is believed that, by this time, he was already recruited into the British secret services. Certainly, 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. In 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
, who was a famous 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.
. 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, also coincidentally the same address as the Authors' Club
of which Alexander Wilson was a member.
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.
.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Publisher's blurb: 'The mysterious death of Major Elliott and the theft of some very important plans of the Frontier, cause great consternation to the Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief in India. The Viceroy cables for Sir Leonard Wallace, the Chief of the Intelligence Departent in the India Office
in London. Sir Leonard Wallace, with his assistant, Major Brien, makes a rapid flight to India, where he finds himself up against agents of the Russian Soviet, and makes important discoveries on the very night of his arrival in Karachi
.'
Publisher's blurb: 'Foster, a British agent sent to Germany to obtain vital information, fell passionately in love with Baroness von Reudath, the beautiful confidante of the infamous Marshal von Strom. The Marshal, almost insane with jealousy and fearing betrayal of his plans, seized Foster and had him removed from the sight of prying eyes. The Baroness, after a travesty of a trial, was condemned to the headsman's axe. But Wallace, the famous Chief of Secret Service, discovered her plight. With the cool and calculating courage that had borne him through many a desperate enterprise he made his plans to free Foster and the Baroness.
A novel published by Simon & Schuster
in the USA entitled 'The Town Is Full Of Rumors' in 1941 and republished in 1955 as 'Death Watch,' was written by Alexander Wilson and Ruth Wilson, but this Alexander Wilson, coincidentally also born in 1893, was a different writer.
Early life
Wilson was born in DoverDover
Dover is a town and major ferry port in the home county of Kent, in South East England. It faces France across the narrowest part of the English Channel, and lies south-east of Canterbury; east of Kent's administrative capital Maidstone; and north-east along the coastline from Dungeness and Hastings...
to an Irish mother and an English father, who had a 40 year career in the British army from 15 year old boy bugler to Colonel in the RAMC (Royal Army Medical Corps) when he died in 1919. His father served throughout the Boer War
Boer War
The Boer Wars were two wars fought between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics, the Oranje Vrijstaat and the Republiek van Transvaal ....
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 College in Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
where he played amateur soccer.
First World War
Wilson was in the Royal NavyRoyal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
at the start of the Great War. A reference in a War Office document indicated he had been in the Royal Naval Air Service
Royal Naval Air Service
The Royal Naval Air Service or RNAS was the air arm of the Royal Navy until near the end of the First World War, when it merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps to form a new service , the Royal Air Force...
and crashed his plane. He was then commissioned in 1915 in the Royal Army Service Corps
Royal Army Service Corps
The Royal Army Service Corps was a corps of the British Army. It was responsible for land, coastal and lake transport; air despatch; supply of food, water, fuel, and general domestic stores such as clothing, furniture and stationery ; administration of...
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
Merchant Navy
The Merchant Navy is the maritime register of the United Kingdom, and describes the seagoing commercial interests of UK-registered ships and their crews. Merchant Navy vessels fly the Red Ensign and are regulated by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency...
in 1919 serving as a purser on a requisitioned German liner SS Prinzessin, sailing from London to Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
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-ruled India to become Professor of English Literature at Islamia CollegeIslamia College
Islamia College may refer to:*Islamia College , Lahore, Pakistan*Amiruddaula Islamia Degree College, Lucknow, India*Islamia College , Peshawar, Pakistan*Islamia Science College , Karachi, Pakistan...
, the University of Punjab in Lahore
Lahore
Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...
(now part of Pakistan). It is believed that, by this time, he was already recruited into the British secret services. Certainly, while in the post at Lahore, he travelled around the North-West Frontier
North-West Frontier (military history)
The North-West Frontier was the most difficult area, from a military point of view, of the former British India in the Indian sub-continent. It remains the frontier of present-day Pakistan, extending from the Pamir Knot in the north to the Koh-i-Malik Siah in the west, and separating the...
, learned Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
and Persian and was appointed an honorary Major in the Indian Army Reserve. In 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
Abdullah Yusuf Ali
Hafiz Abdullah Yusuf Ali, CBE, FRSL was an Indian Islamic scholar who translated the Qur'an into English. His translation of the Qur'an is one of the most widely-known and used in the English-speaking world....
, who was a famous 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-CummingMansfield Smith-Cumming
Captain Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming, KCMG, CB was the first director of what would become the Secret Intelligence Service , also known as MI6...
. 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, also coincidentally the same address as the Authors' Club
Authors' Club
The Authors' Club is a British membership organization established as a place where writers could meet and talk. It was founded by the novelist and critic Walter Besant in 1891....
of which Alexander Wilson was a member.
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 SouthamptonSouthampton
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
.
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 Second World War
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 AlameinEl Alamein
El Alamein is a town in the northern Matrouh Governorate of Egypt. Located on the Mediterranean Sea, it lies west of Alexandria and northwest of Cairo. As of 2007, it has a local population of 7,397 inhabitants.- Climate :...
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.
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
Ealing
Ealing is a suburban area of west London, England and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Ealing. It is located west of Charing Cross and around from the City of London. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically a rural village...
and is buried in Milton cemetery, Portsmouth
Portsmouth
Portsmouth is the second largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is notable for being the United Kingdom's only island city; it is located mainly on Portsea Island...
with a tombstone describing him as an author and patriot and the quotation from Shakespeare's Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
'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 WilsonRuth Wilson (actress)
Ruth Wilson is an English actress, perhaps best known for her performance in the title role of Jane Eyre.-Early life and education:...
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
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
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. The cover of this book carries the blurb: 'Murder in the tunnel, and the theft of plans. Then spies pursued through India by Secret Agents.'
Publisher's blurb: 'The mysterious death of Major Elliott and the theft of some very important plans of the Frontier, cause great consternation to the Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief in India. The Viceroy cables for Sir Leonard Wallace, the Chief of the Intelligence Departent in the India Office
India Office
The India Office was a British government department created in 1858 to oversee the colonial administration of India, i.e. the modern-day nations of Bangladesh, Burma, India, and Pakistan, as well as territories in South-east and Central Asia, the Middle East, and parts of the east coast of Africa...
in London. Sir Leonard Wallace, with his assistant, Major Brien, makes a rapid flight to India, where he finds himself up against agents of the Russian Soviet, and makes important discoveries on the very night of his arrival in Karachi
Karachi
Karachi is the largest city, main seaport and the main financial centre of Pakistan, as well as the capital of the province of Sindh. The city has an estimated population of 13 to 15 million, while the total metropolitan area has a population of over 18 million...
.'
- 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 JenkinsBarrie & JenkinsBarrie & Jenkins was a small British publishing house that was formed in 1964 from the merger of "Herbert Jenkins" and "Barrie & Rockcliffe". One of their most notable authors was P. G...
.
- 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.
Publisher's blurb: 'Foster, a British agent sent to Germany to obtain vital information, fell passionately in love with Baroness von Reudath, the beautiful confidante of the infamous Marshal von Strom. The Marshal, almost insane with jealousy and fearing betrayal of his plans, seized Foster and had him removed from the sight of prying eyes. The Baroness, after a travesty of a trial, was condemned to the headsman's axe. But Wallace, the famous Chief of Secret Service, discovered her plight. With the cool and calculating courage that had borne him through many a desperate enterprise he made his plans to free Foster and the Baroness.
- 1939: Scapegoats for Murder. Herbert Jenkins.
- 1940: Chronicles of the Secret Service. Herbert Jenkins.
- 1940: Double Masquerade. Herbert Jenkins.
A novel published by Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
in the USA entitled 'The Town Is Full Of Rumors' in 1941 and republished in 1955 as 'Death Watch,' was written by Alexander Wilson and Ruth Wilson, but this Alexander Wilson, coincidentally also born in 1893, was a different writer.