512 • SPECIAL WIRELESS GROUPS
toria Cross at Oran but died in an air crash in Devon on the way
home. Those with an aptitude for radio work did a wireless operators
course at Thame Park (STS 52). Finally, agents who passed a four-
day test, requiring them to reconnoiter a target somewhere in En-
gland where the local police had been alerted for possible saboteurs,
spent their last few nights before a mission at Brockhall (STS 61) in
Northamptonshire, not too distant from Tempsford, or from ‘‘Fare-
well House,’’ which was actually Hassells Hall in Sandy.
Each of the country sections had its own separate schools. The
Czechs went to Chicheley Hall (STS 46) near Newport Pagnell,
while the Poles were concentrated at Hatherop Castle (STS 45),
Gloucestershire, and Audley End House near Saffron Walden. The
Danes were at Gumley Hall (STS 41), Market Harborough, and the
Norwegians at Gaynes Hall (STS 61), St. Neots. As well as at Wan-
borough Manor,F Sectionwas accommodated at Bellasis near Dork-
ing (STS 2), Chorley Wood in Hertfordshire, and 11 secluded houses
on Lord Montagu’s estate atBeaulieuin the New Forest. RF Section
was based at Inchmery, near Southampton.SPECIAL WIRELESS GROUPS (SWG).During World War II the
Royal Corps of Signalsdeveloped an intercept capability known as
Special Wireless Groups. Trained at the Royal Signals depots at
Trowbridge and Bridgewater in Somerset, SWGs were deployed
across the world to monitor enemy wireless traffic and relay inter-
cepted signals to the local regional headquarters—Bletchley Park;
Sarafand, Palestine; Heliopolis, Egypt; or Kandy, Ceylon.
SPEDDING, SIR DAVID.Chief of theSecret Intelligence Service
(SIS) from 1994 to 1999, David Spedding was the son of a colonel
in the Border Regiment and was educated at Sherborne. He marched
with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to Aldermaston and
joined SIS in 1967 at the age of 24 while working as a postgraduate
student at Oxford, having read medieval history at Hertford College.
In his gap year, Spedding traveled to Chile and had found temporary
work as an assistant in the press office of the British embassy in San-
tiago, which gave him entre ́e into SIS.
Upon joining SIS, Spedding underwent the usual year’s training in
England. Already fluent in French and Spanish, he was posted to