Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

TUDOR HART, EDITH• 551

was headed by David Boyle of SIS, butAnthony Bluntconducted a

review of its activities in 1941.

TUBE ALLOYS.The Directorate of Tube Alloys was the innocuous
cover name adopted by the Ministry of Supply for the British atomic
weapon development project in 1941, following the War Cabinet’s
decision to commission Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) to pursue
nuclear fission and build a bomb. TheSecret Intelligence Service
assigned CommanderEric Welshto liaise with Tube Alloys. His
section, accommodated at 16 Queen Anne’s Gate, was designated
‘‘TAL.’’ Although the entire undertaking was surrounded with great
secrecy, it was penetrated by several Soviet spies, among themAllan
Nunn May, Klaus Fuchs,Melita Norwood, and several others as yet
unidentified.

TUDOR HART, EDITH.An active member of the banned Austrian
Communist party, Edith Tudor Hart was also a Soviet illegal who
completed two undercover missions, to Paris and London, in 1929.
As a talent-spotter in June 1934, she cultivatedKim Philbyand in-
troduced him toArnold Deutschfor recruitment. TheKGB ar-
chivescontain a letter dated October 1936 from the London illegal
rezidenturatoMoscow Centernoting:

Throughedithwe obtainedsonny[Philby]. In the attached report you

will find details of a secondsonnywho, in all probability, offers even

greater possibilities than the first. Edith is of the opinion that [he] is more

promising thansonny. From the report you will see that he has very defi-

nite possibilities. We must make haste with these people before they start

being active in university life.

Born in Vienna in 1908 to William Suschitsky, a radical socialist

who advocated birth control and sex education and owned a book-

shop in the working-class district of Petzvalgasse, Edith Suschitsky

trained as a Montessori kindergarten teacher and in 1925 traveled to

England to work as a teacher. Two years later she was back in Vi-

enna, studying photography under Walter Peterhans at the Bauhaus

in Dessau.

In 1933 Edith Suschitsky married Dr. Alex Tudor Hart, a left-wing

medical practitioner, at the British consulate, and the couple moved