Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

KESSLER, ERIC• 285

son, the local SIS head of station. In 1940 Kerby was switched to

Malmo ̈, and according to his uninformative entry inWho’s Who,he

spent the remainder of the war ‘‘specially employed under War Of-

fice.’’ At the end of the war, he received decorations from Finland,

Poland, Norway, Yugoslavia, and Denmark, which gives a clue to the

territories he dealt with while in SIS.

Kerby was unsuccessful when he contested the 1945 general elec-

tion in Spelthorne, Middlesex, for the Liberals, and in Swansea West

for the Conservatives in 1951. In 1947 he married Enid Herchen-

roder, and they had two daughters. He was finally elected to the Com-

mons in March 1954 at a by-election as the Tory MP for Arundel,

West Sussex. Because he was a fluent Russian speaker, Kerby was

the official interpreter for Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to England in

1956.

Until 1966, whenHarold WilsoninstructedMI5not to run MPs

as agents, Kerby was a valued source for the Security Service, report-

ing on his many trade visits to Moscow. He was frequently seen as a

guest at the Soviet embassy in London, and in 1952 approachedKim

Philbywith an invitation to tea and a curious story. He claimed to

have been sacked from SIS and offered to use his position in Parlia-

ment to attack the Foreign Office if Philby could supply him with

any ammunition. According to Philby’s version of this episode, in

My Silent War, he rejected the proposition.

When Kerby’s friend Leslie Nicholson announced his intention to

publish his memoirs, designed to wrongfoot SIS, Kerby gave his sup-

port and contributed an endorsement which was calculated to inflict

maximum embarrassment.

Kerby was widely distrusted by his own party, and after his death

in January 1971 at age 56, it was revealed that he had been on sur-

prisingly close terms with Wilson, the Labour leader, to the extent

that some regarded him as a spy for the Socialists inside the Tory

camp. Nevertheless he had been returned at the 1970 general election

with a huge majority, a not-inconsiderable achievement bearing in

mind that he had suffered a heart attack in February of that year.

KESSLER, ERIC.A Swiss journalist based in London before World
War II, Eric Kessler joined the Swiss embassy as a diplomat and was
recruited byGuy Burgessas a source, codenamedorange. Kessler