BENTON, KENNETH• 43eted accolade that reflected the author’s high standing among his fel-
low writers, few reading his biography would have known that his
long service in the diplomatic corps was actually a cover for a clan-
destine career.
Benton joined SIS in 1937 after having studied languages at Lon-
don University and having worked as a teacher in Florence and Aus-
tria. It was in Vienna that he was enrolled into SIS and where he
worked under Thomas Kendrick, the head of station who was to be
arrested by the Nazis in August the following year. The SIS station
was then evacuated and Benton moved toLeslie Nicholson’s station
in Riga, Latvia, but he was withdrawn again in 1940 after enduring
three months of Soviet occupation. His lengthy return to London
took him via Moscow, the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Pacific,
Tokyo, and Ottawa. After his arrival in London, Benton was trans-
ferred to Section V and sent as that department’s representative to
Madrid. In Spain Benton was embroiled in numerous adventures, in-
cluding the bribery of the private secretary of Alcazar de Velasco, a
notorious German spy who operated in London as the press attache ́
at theSpanish embassy.
Benton was also involved in the mysterious disappearance of a
Vichy French naval officer, Capitaine de Corvette Lablache-Com-
bier, from Lisbon. Formerly the commander of L’Impassible,
Lablache-Combier volunteered to work for de Gaulle’s Free French
intelligence service, the Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Ac-
tion, and was sent to Lisbon with the identity of Paul Lewis-Claire.
However, once in the Portuguese capital, he underwent a change of
heart and offered his services to the naval attache ́at the Vichy em-
bassy, Admiral Delaye. This approach was instantly reported to SIS
by Delaye’s assistant, Jean Boutron, and arrangements were made to
abduct thedefector. Lablache-Combier was invited on a pretext to
the British embassy, where he was seized by Benton andJ. M. Lang-
ley, drugged, and then driven in a car boot toGibraltar. Upon his
arrival on the Rock, having been smuggled across the Spanish fron-
tier, he was discovered to be dead.
After two years in Madrid, Benton moved to Rome, but returned
to London for a headquarters post in 1948. He was back in Italy in
1950, and in 1953 returned to Madrid. Soon after the Suez crisis of
1956 Benton moved back to London, and then in 1963 went to Peru