The right of David Tremain to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.Ī CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.Īll rights reserved. To my sister, Anne Thompson, who has been my lifeline when times got toughįirst published in Great Britain in 2021 by Read moreĪgent Provocateur for Hitler or Churchill? This book will explore the role this strange woman may or may not have played in working for British Intelligence, the French Deuxième Bureau, or the Abwehr – German military intelligence – during the Second World War, using her MI5 files as a primary source. She doesn’t even merit a mention in the two official histories of MI5, even though she managed to tie them up in knots for years. Until now, very little has been recorded about Stella Lonsdale’s life. The descriptions variously ascribed to her ranged from ‘remarkable’ and ‘quite ravishing’ to ‘…a woman whose loose living would make her an object of shame on any farm-yard’. After the war she became romantically involved with a well-known British Fascist, but finally married another notorious criminal whom she had met earlier during the war. One whose dubious claim to have worked for them is a fascinating tale involving three marriages – the first, to a spurious White Russian prince the second to a playboy-turned-criminal involved in a major jewellery robbery in the heart of London’s Mayfair in the late 1930s. There have been many remarkable women who served British Intelligence during the Second World War.

Agent provocateur secret agents