88 • CAVENDISH LABORATORY
war and sent toCairo, where he joined Security Intelligence Middle
East. There Cavendish metMaurice Oldfield, and they served to-
gether in Egypt andPalestineuntil Oldfield’s transfer to theSecret
Intelligence Service(SIS) in London. In July 1948 Cavendish was
demobilized and, following an interview withFrank Slocum,Dick
Brooman-White, and TimMilne, was invited to join R5, thecoun-
terintelligencerequirements section, where Oldfield worked along-
sideCharles Ransom. In the summer of 1950 Cavendish was posted
to Hamburg under Control Commission cover as one ofJohn Bruce-
Lockhart’s subordinates; there, he helped run agents across the Bal-
tic into Eastern Europe. Later he was moved to Berlin and then, after
falling out with Donald Prater, transferred to the SIS station in Vi-
enna. Cavendish’s promising SIS career came to an end soon after-
ward when he was recalled to London following a late-night motor
accident.
Cavendish first came to public attention in 1986 when he wrote to
theTimesto protest that Chapman Pincher could never have con-
ducted an interview with the late Sir Maurice Oldfield on the latter’s
deathbed, as claimed by the veteranDaily Expressjournalist. Caven-
dish insisted that he had been at Oldfield’s bedside continuously and
Pincher’s claim was untrue. The background to the challenge was ex-
traordinary. Oldfield, who had been chief of SIS, and later director
of intelligence in Northern Ireland, had been posthumously de-
nounced by Pincher as an active homosexual who had first lied about,
and then confessed to, his illicit proclivities to the authorities. As a
former SIS officer who had maintained his friendship with Oldfield
long after he had moved into merchant banking, Cavendish was out-
raged by Pincher’s allegation and was prompted to publish his own
memoirs,Inside Intelligence, in defense of his friend. His account
traced his work as a case officer with Security Intelligence Middle
East and as an SIS officer in postwar Germany and recalled his
involvement with one of SIS’s first Soviet intelligencedefectors.
However, far from welcoming his intervention, the British govern-
ment responded with an injunction, which was later overturned in the
Scottish courts. When it was eventually released in 1990, the book
contained a foreword byGeorge Young, formerly SIS’s vice chief.CAVENDISH LABORATORY.The principal physics laboratory at
Cambridge University, the Cavendish Laboratory undertook atomic