ADRIAN LEIGH MCLAUGHLIN (1910-79) was educated at Clifton College and Hertford College, Oxford. He joined Queen Victoria's Rifles, a Territorial Army battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps, in 1938 and was promoted to lieutenant in 1941.

From 1942 Adrian served in the Moscow Mission of the Special Operations Executive, a secret service dedicated to sabotage and subversion. He became head of the section responsible for Operation Pickaxe which parachuted agents of the Soviet NKVD Secret Police behind enemy lines. Of the 34 agents handled by Moscow Mission, 27 were dropped successfully, 3 were killed, and 4 tried (with the Mission's connivance) to escape from the NKVD, but they were caught.

Adrian always liked to sleep with the window open. In Moscow he used to awake in the morning with frost on his moustache.

After World War II Adrian became the British Vice-Consul in Prague. When the Soviet Union took control of Czechoslovakia he tried to smuggle a friend belonging to the former regime out to Austria in the trunk of his car. Thanks to an informer they were caught. There was a trial in which Adrian was named a spy. He was expelled from Czechoslovakia. The friend was never heard of again.

Because his life was now in danger, Adrian was kept in the Foreign Office for most of the rest of his career. He compensated by developing an addiction to the board game version of Diplomacy.

Adrian collected rare books, fast cars and very queer friends. Sotheby's auctioned his Cabinet de Livres in Monte Carlo in 1980. Most of the 2,071 lots were notable for fine bindings. Some of the books had belonged to Madame de Pompadour, all leather-bound with her coat of arms stamped in gilt, like the one on the left.

As the picture on the right attests, Adrian had been a world traveler ever since childhood. He celebrated his birthdays by sitting in bed while consuming an entire one pound can of caviar.

Adrian was a smart dresser, whether he was wearing a morning suit, the King's Royal Rifle Corps uniform, or plus-fours. [N.B. They must not be referred to by their American name knickers: in Britain those garments are unmentionable.]

He offset his extravagances by not heating most of his stone-cold home, Milbourne House, at Barnes Green, Richmond upon Thames. The house, which he had inherited from his mother Winifred, was built in the 15th century with walls a yard thick, which accounts for the cold. The Blue Plaque visible in the photograph below reads "Henry Fielding, 1707-1754, Novelist, lived here."

Other occupants included Robert Beale, Queen Elizabeth's secretary, who read the death sentence to Mary Queen of Scots, and Sir Henry Wyatt, Controller of the Mint and for 34 years Master of the King’s Jewels, who acquired the freehold in 1517.

© 2006 G. Harry McLaughlin.
Reproduction or transmission, in whole or in part, for other than personal use is prohibited without advance permission from Dr. G. H. McLaughlin.