552 • TUDOR HART, EDITH
to Brixton in South London and then to the Rhondda Valley in Wales.
Upon their return from South Wales, her husband joined the republi-
can forces in Spain as a surgeon, while Edith Tudor Hart opened a
studio in Acre Lane in South London and began to specialize, after
the birth of her son in 1936, in child portraits. During this period, she
was active in the Workers Camera Club, contributed toPicture Post,
and organized the Artists against Fascism and War exhibition. She
also maintained contact with her friend from Vienna,Litzi Fried-
man, who was by then separated from Philby, and liaised closely
withBob Stewartof theCommunist Party of Great Britain. The
Tudor Harts divorced after his return from Spain.
In March 1938, a Leica camera originally purchased by Edith
Tudor Hart was discovered in a police raid on the home ofPercy
Glading, who was subsequently convicted of organizing theWool-
wich Arsenalspy ring, but when questioned bySpecial Branchde-
tectives she simply denied any involvement. At that momentMI5had
no reason to be suspicious of her, nor any reason to suspect her role
in the cultivation of Philby.
After the war Tudor Hart worked as a commercial photographer
and briefly for the Ministry of Education, but her mental condition
deteriorated and she suffered a breakdown, her son already having
been institutionalized. She later opened a small antiques shop in
Brighton and died of liver cancer in 1973.
Tudor Hart, who was directly responsible for the recruitment of
both Philby and the mysteriousscott—who is believed by theKGB
to have been alive as recently as 1995—was never interviewed by
MI5. The only link established between Philby and Tudor Hart, apart
from her former husband Alex having been his contemporary at
Cambridge, was a telephone call to her home, intercepted in 1951, in
which an unidentified caller advised her to destroy the negative of his
picture that she had taken in Vienna in 1933. One of Philby’s favor-
ites photographs, showing him posed pensively smoking a pipe, had
been taken by Tudor Hart in Vienna and amounted to clear evidence
of a connection between theSecret Intelligence Serviceofficer, then
under detailed investigation, and a Soviet spy suspect. In 1951 this
would have been almost enough to seal Philby’s fate, but when
asked, he denied ever having known Tudor Hart, and MI5 never
traced her photograph.