514 • SPEDDING, SIR DAVID
charge of SIS’s 60 overseas stations. He also named him his assistant
chief, to take over from him as Chief in September 1994. Spedding’s
appointment, at the age of 50, was announced to the public in March
1994, only the second time the government had ever openly acknowl-
edged the identity of a new Chief. Thus for the second time in his
career, Spedding’s name attracted publicity, but he continued to live
at his homes in Richborne Terrace, nearVauxhall Cross,andin
Church Street, Henley, and to play a few rounds at the nearby Hunt-
ercombe Golf Club and lunch in London at the Atheneum. He was
the youngest Chief in SIS’s history and the first never to have served
in the forces.
His first crisis concerned unauthorized disclosures from a dis-
missed officer,Richard Tomlinson, who had left SIS embittered in
April 1995. During Spedding’s tenure as Chief, he supervised SIS’s
move fromCentury Houseto its flashy new headquarters at 85 Al-
bert Embankment on the south side of the Thames at Vauxhall Cross
in 1994. He was widely regarded as a youthful modernist and cer-
tainly promoted that image of himself. He authorized the filming of
the riverside exterior of Vauxhall Cross for the 1999James Bond
movieThe World Is Not Enoughand even invited Dame Judi Dench,
the actress who played ‘‘M’’ in the Bond movies, to SIS’s Christmas
lunch in December 1998. She was not allowed to be driven in her
own car, and the SIS driver had difficulty finding her house, with the
result that she was 45 minutes late. Nevertheless, she later declared
herself to have ‘‘found the experience very exciting’’ and was ‘‘fasci-
nated, but not surprised, at how many languages everyone spoke.’’
At the end of the lunch, Spedding presented her with a miniature spy
camera in a red leather case—but no film.
Another of Spedding’s widely publicized initiatives was his an-
nouncement, in February 1999, that SIS had posted its first gay cou-
ple to an overseas post. The officer concerned was Christopher
Hurran, who was sent to Prague accompanied by his Venezuelan
partner, and the Chief’s objective had been to make the point that
declared homosexuality was no longer a barrier to a security clear-
ance. In addition, SIS was experiencing considerable difficulty in
persuading staff to take on overseas stations where their families
might be exposed to risk. Indeed, most middle-ranking personnel
with young children were reluctant to interrupt their education by
going abroad at all.