H. Montgomery Hyde - Secret Intelligence Agent

Secret Intelligence Agent

He joined the British Army Intelligence Corps in 1939 serving as an Assistant Censor in Gibraltar in 1940. He was then commissioned in the intelligence corps (MI6) and engaged in counter-espionage work in the United States under Sir William Stephenson, Director of British Security Coordination in the Western Hemisphere. He was also Military Liaison and Security Officer, Bermuda from 1940 to 1941 and Assistant Passport Control Officer in New York from 1941 to 1942. He was with British Army Staff, USA from 1942 to 1944, attached to the Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force in 1944, and then seconded to the Allied Control Commission for Austria until 1945 as a legal officer. He continued writing and publishing during the war and would be addressed as "Lt. Col. Hyde" throughout most of his parliamentary career. He would continue to cover the topic of espionage in his writings. In 1982 he wrote the book, Secret Intelligence Agent describing his war experiences.

After the war, he became assistant Editor of the Law Reports until 1947 and was legal adviser to the British Lion Film Corporation, then managed by Alexander Korda, up to 1949; in 1948 he published The Trials of Oscar Wilde, a precursor of three more books about Wilde.