396 • O’BRYAN TEAR, HUBERT
Sweden. O’Brien-Ffrench arrived at his new job in January 1919 and
was introduced toAugustus Agarand Arthur Ransome. In the au-
tumn of the following year O’Brien-Ffrench was transferred to
Stockholm, and he remained there until May 1921 when his tour
ended and he returned to his regiment, which had been posted to
India. While there he acted as ADC to the Prince of Wales, but he
was bored by the dull routine of soldiering and resigned his commis-
sion in 1923.
Having abandoned regimental life, O’Brien-Ffrench became
something of Bohemian and studied at the Slade School of Art, and
later in Paris, to be a painter. He acquired a reputation as a playboy
and spent the next few years traveling across Europe. Among his ac-
quaintances in the art world during this period wasToma ́s Harris,
the Goya expert who was later to joinMI5. In July 1935 O’Brien-
Ffrench was skiing in Lapland when he discovered by accident that
large reserves of Swedish iron ore had been reserved for the German
steel industry. This he reported to Menzies, and he was soon back on
SIS’s books, ostensibly running a tour company in Vienna but actu-
ally undertaking reconnaissance missions from the ski resort of Kitz-
buhel. Among his clients who took advantage of the low-cost ski
holidays offered by his Tyrolese Tours werePeter FlemingandIan
Fleming. His principal case officer wasClaude Dansey, whom he
disliked. ‘‘Times had changed. British Intelligence was now run on a
shoe-string budget and on my first day Claude Dansey, as new chief,
had insulted me by slipping me a fiver as if he were hooking a com-
mon informer.’’
At the outbreak of World War II O’Brien-Ffrench was in Canada,
having resigned from SIS because his cover had been compromised
by the Gestapo but he returned to London in the summer of 1940 and
was appointed a censor in Scotland. Later he was to do the same work
in Trinidad, and ended the war in poor health in Oxford. Soon after
the conclusion of hostilities O’Brien-Ffrench married and moved
back to Canada, where he bought a ranch and taught at the Banff
School of Fine Arts. His autobiography,Delicate Mission,was pub-
lished in 1979 when O’Brien-Ffrench was 85.O’BRYAN TEAR, HUBERT.Educated at St. Paul’s and Cambridge,
where he read modern languages, Terry O’Bryan Tear worked for