110
Mary has related an amusing incident in which Bishop broke his arm by
attempting to hand-crank his car without first putting it in neutral. The
three-wheeler started, leapt forwards, struck Bishop (fortunately) a glanc-
ing blow, and then plunged through a fence, ending up in a neighbour’s
garden. Grieve to Wright, n.d. (courtesy of Peter T. Wright).
- Leslie Mitchell, Maurice Bowra: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009), 130.
- Herbert John Underwood’s name appears on Bishop’s death certificate,
issued on 6 December 1942, as the official informant. See HS 9/157/8,
TNA. A career Indian Army officer (29th Punjabis, formerly of the Royal
Scots), John Underwood (1895–1969) had served as military attaché at
the Tehran legation since 1938, which provided him with adequate cover
for his SOE role. He would later become Bullard’s PA for Khuzestan, pri-
marily responsible for the security of the southwest Persian oil infrastruc-
ture, including the AIOC refinery at Abadan. It is possible that he also
worked for SIS. Underwood retired from the Indian Army as a full colonel
and lies buried at the Famagusta Military Cemetery (Cyprus); his head-
stone is engraved with the badge of the Royal Scots. See memorial no.
157535846 , maintained by Iain MacFarlaine (contributor 46514200),
Find A Grave, https://www.findagrave.com (accessed 15 February 2019).
See also ECOP, 107.
- Philip to Hall-Dare, 12 May 1944, HS 9/157/8, TNA. £140 was donated,
and many glowing tributes were published in the Arab Press.
- Grave 1.E.4., Teheran War Cemetery, Gholhak Garden, Shemiran.
Bishop’s MID is listed in: Supplement to the London Gazette, no. 36065, 24
June 1943, 2863.
- Regarding the early cooperation between Section D and the Haganah, see
Jacob A. Stoil, ‘The Haganah and SOE: Allies and Enemies: Irregular
Warfare and Politics in Mandatory Palestine’, unpublished paper given at
SMH, 2012, 3–11.
- History of SOE in the Arab World, September 1945, HS 7/86, TNA.
- Survey of Global Activities, War Diary 2, February 1941, HS 7/213,
TNA. This cryptic reasoning is inexplicable, as is the implication that
Bishop was still an AIOC employee some 20 years after leaving the com-
pany. Possibly he was at some time in Iraq under AIOC cover, though this
is not corroborated elsewhere. In early 1941, there was indeed a contro-
versy about the unauthorized local SIS use of AIOC employees, but this
would hardly have involved Bishop, who was not recruited locally and was
by then working for SOE. See Keith Jeffery, The Secret History of MI6
(New York: Penguin, 2010), 435–6.
- Royal Monmouthshire Regiment.
- Saul Kelly, ‘A Succession of Crises: SOE in the Middle East, 1940–45’,
Intelligence and National Security 20, no. 1 (March 2005): 125.
ADRIAN O’SULLIVAN
