YOUNGER, SIR KENNETH• 593his Chief, Sinclair, had askedAnthony Edenfor permission to take
early retirement. Young’s hopes of succeeding him were dashed by
the BusterCrabbaffair, in which a freelance diver was killed while
on a clandestine mission that had been specifically prohibited by the
prime minister. A secret inquiry was conducted into the fiasco and it
laid the blame on an unfortunate set of coincidences but, for the sake
of the politicians, Sinclair agreed to at least appear to be a scapegoat.
However, instead of appointing Young, Eden movedSir Dick White
from the Security Service into the Chief’s office. Even though he was
five years younger than White, Young realized that he would be un-
likely to take the helm, and that in any event White would probably
veto him. Disillusioned, he moved into merchant banking in 1961
and joined Kleinwort Benson.
Significantly, Young’s first book was entitledMasters of Indeci-
sion:An Inquiry into the Political Process, but he also wrote what
is widely regarded as the standard textbook on merchant banking in
London. Young also moved into the political arena, considerably in-
fluenced by his wife Geryke, who had come from the Dutch East
Indies and held strongly right-wing views. Although he stood for
Parliament in 1974 and was active in the Monday Club, he never held
elected office.YOUNG, SIR GEORGE.Educated at Eton and universities in France,
Germany, and Russia, George Young joined the staff of the British
embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1896 and later had served in Ath-
ens, Constantinople (where he learned Turkish and became an expert
in Ottoman law), Madrid, and Belgrade. At the outbreak of World
War I, he was serving in Lisbon, but he returned to London to head
Room 40’sDiplomatic Section, which achieved the unsurpassed
coup of solving the cipher used by the German Foreign Ministry to
encrypt theZimmermann Telegramin January 1917. In March
1918 he was appointed professor of Portuguese at London Univer-
sity, and after he had inherited his father’s baronetcy, he was adopted
as a Labour party parliamentary candidate.
YOUNGER, SIR KENNETH.The second son of Viscount Younger
of Leckie, Kenneth Younger was educated at Winchester and New
College, Oxford, before being called to the bar by the Inner Temple