Roger Hollis: Somerset’s Soviet spy?

The story of Soviet spies within the UK’s security services is as mysterious and enduring for us as the JFK assassination is for Americans. And there is a Somerset connection, as it has long been alleged that Sir Roger Hollis, Director General of MI5 between 1956 and his retirement in 1965, was actually a secret agent for the Soviet Union.

Hollis had strong family connections with Somerset. His mother, Mary Church, was born in Wells in 1874 and her father was a Canon of Wells. His father, born in Derbyshire in 1868, was vice-principal of Wells Theological College and then Bishop of Taunton from 1931 to 1944. They married at Wells on 5 July 1898.

Hollis himself was born in Wells on 2 December 1905, was educated at Clifton College, Bristol, and was married in Wells Cathedral on 10 July 1937, to Evelyn Swayne, daughter of a Glastonbury solicitor.

On his retirement from MI5 in 1965, he moved back to Somerset, first to Wells, and then in 1968, after a divorce and remarriage (to Edith Valentine (Val) Hammond, who worked for him in the Security Service), to Catcott. There he died on 26 October 1973, and his funeral service was held in the village church on 31 October.

Hollis was active in the local community during his last Somerset years. He was a member of several school governing bodies. He also indulged his love of golf, being captain of the Burnham and Berrow Golf Club, President of the Somerset Golfing Union, and Somerset’s representative on the English Golfing Union. From 1983 the Sir Roger Hollis Cup was presented to the best nett score at the County Seniors Championship.

He was a member of Bridgwater Rural District Council from May 1970. There, as its Minutes Books show, he dealt with the usual range of local government issues. On one occasion, in 1971, he was even able to deploy his expertise in golfing matters, when there was a discussion of a proposed new golf course. Though a far cry from the corridors of power of Whitehall and Westminster, he was an assiduous attendee at council meetings, hardly absent until he became ill in 1973. The meeting following his death in October 1973 recorded its appreciation of his “kindness, charm and intellect.”

The frequent periods of ‘spy mania’ over recent decades had an unfortunate, unwanted impact on the village of Catcott, as mentions of the allegations against Hollis would often send the media and others scurrying there.

The most public of these was in the spring of 1981, when Chapman Pincher’s book, Their trade is treachery, was serialised. The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, had to make a Commons statement on 26 March formally refuting the allegations against Hollis. As the Somerset County Gazette wrote: “The world of international espionage descended like a whirlwind upon the quiet Somerset village of Catcott this week.”

It was reported that Lady Hollis left the family home in Catcott to avoid the inevitable press furore, and that the vicar of the church wrote to her after Mrs Thatcher’s statement, asking her to return. In a bizarre postscript a few months later, a man was sentenced to 3½ years at Bristol Crown Court for attempting to break in to the Hollis home after reading of Lady Hollis’ departure.