23 Facts About Roger Hollis

Roger Hollis was Director General of MI5 from 1956 to 1965.

Some commentators, including the journalist Chapman Pincher and intelligence officer Peter Wright, suggested that Hollis was a Soviet agent.

The government's official position, first stated by Margaret Thatcher, is that there was no evidence that Roger Hollis was a traitor.

Roger Hollis's mother was the daughter of a Canon of Wells Cathedral.

Roger Hollis was criticised for not alerting John Profumo, the War Secretary in Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, that he might have become entangled with a Soviet spy ring through his friendship with Stephen Ward and his affair with showgirl Christine Keeler, who was introduced by Ward to Profumo.

White instructed Martin to inform Roger Hollis that Mitchell was a suspect, and Roger Hollis instructed Martin to keep Mitchell under surveillance.

Pincher accused Roger Hollis of being a Soviet agent, although separate from the Cambridge Five spy ring.

Pincher claims Roger Hollis was recruited by Richard Sorge in China in the early 1930s to spy for the GRU.

Evidence has been advanced to support these assertions by Pincher in his book, Treachery: Betrayals, Blunders, and Cover-ups: Six Decades of Espionage Against America and Great Britain, which is devoted to positing that Roger Hollis was "Elli", the highly placed mole within MI5 identified by Igor Gouzenko, and operating as a Soviet agent from the 1940s until retiring from MI5.

Roger Hollis was asked to come in and clear up the allegations.

Roger Hollis remained calm and composed throughout, denying all allegations.

Roger Hollis emigrated to Tasmania, Australia, where he wrote an account of his work at MI5.

In Keeler's updated book, Secrets and Lies, published in 2012, Keeler stated she saw Roger Hollis visiting Ward five times at the house she shared with Ward.

Roger Hollis believes Andrew dismisses Wright's claims almost ad hominem but fails to address the specific points made by Pincher in his final book on the subject.

On 21 April 2015, the Institute of World Politics held a panel debating whether or not Roger Hollis was a mole.

Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB head of station in London who defected to Britain in 1985, had said that Roger Hollis was innocent and said of Wright's book, "there was a lot of fantasy in it and malicious speculation".

Roger Hollis has described how the Soviets themselves were baffled by the allegations against Hollis.

Roger Hollis married Evelyn Swayne on 17 July 1937 at Wells Cathedral, with his father performing the ceremony.

Roger Hollis was the daughter of a solicitor from Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset.

Roger Hollis's son, Adrian, was a classical scholar and Grandmaster of correspondence chess, and was British Correspondence Chess Champion in 1966,1967 and 1971.

Roger Hollis's elder brother, Christopher Hollis, was a Conservative MP for Devizes from 1945 to 1955.

Roger Hollis's nephew, Rt Rev Crispian Hollis, a Catholic convert, was the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth.

Roger Hollis was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1946 Birthday Honours, Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1956 New Year Honours, knighted as a Knight Bachelor in the 1960 New Year Honours, and promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1966 New Year Honours.