A Secret Well Kept: The Man Who Founded MI5

Article by Stewart Binns, Author and Filmmaker

There couldn’t be a better title for this remarkable new insight into the secret world of spies and espionage.

These days our spymasters, and those of other nations, are named, appear in front of select committees, make speeches and are even paraded on television. 

Bizarre isn’t it, given that most of us think of ‘secrets’ as things that should remain so and that those who protect our secrets should remain covert and their activities continue to be clandestine.

It is also strange, indeed disappointing, that when these spooks do materialise before our eyes they are but pale imitations of the characters portrayed in the pages of the best of spy fiction novels.

They are, of course, ordinary people like the rest of us, but do we want 007, M, John Steen and Emma Peel to be ‘ordinary people’? 

However in the good old days when, in 1909, to meet the growing threat of German espionage, Captain Vernon Kell was chosen to launch a ‘Secret Service Bureau’, a service that later became the Secret Intelligence Service and then MI5, things were very different.

Few people, even those in the higher echelons of government, knew of the Bureau’s existence and Kell was withdrawn from the active service list, such that he ‘disappeared’ into the dark recesses and murky corners of Whitehall’s arcane corridors of power. 

A Secret Well Kept remained the bywords of Kell’s life and career until the Second World War, when he was ‘retired’ at Churchill’s insistence in June 1940 with his department overwhelmed by the pressures of an entirely new kind of war.

Although he was rewarded with promotion to Major-General and a knighthood, his existence and contribution to the nation remained hidden behind the cloak of secrecy.

He died just two years later, his well-kept secret going to the grave with him.

But a dagger, in the shape of his wife, Constance, cut a little tear in the cloak of secrecy surrounding Vernon’s life and work.

He had kept a diary and extensive notes during his 31-year career. Determined that his legacy be preserved, Constance, not best pleased that his work remained unacknowledged, kept hold of his papers after his death.

Long before he took on the MI5 role she had been at his side throughout his extensive travels, during which he acquired six languages and a huge network of international contacts and included the terrifying ordeal of the Boxer Rebellion.

Resolute in her passion to tell his story, Constance decided to commit it to paper and write his biography.

The result sheds a unique light on the life of Britain’s greatest spymaster.

But the tear in the cloak was too great for the powers that be; it was never published and Constance died in 1971. 

Hidden in an old photo album, her original manuscript was passed down through the family.

There it lay for decades until recently, when the historian Dr. Chris Northcott brought it to the attention of Bloomsbury, the publishers.

Now with the cooperation of Vernon and Constance’s descendants, the story of his remarkable life is set before us – A Secret Well Kept … until now.

A Secret Well Kept: The Untold Story of Sir Vernon Kell, Founder of MI5 by Constance Kell is published by Bloomsbury on 23 February, £16.99/ £14.99 eBook

(Pictures courtesy of the Estate of Constance Kell)