‘Disguised as a priest he boarded the Rothschilds’ yacht to stop an oil deal going to the French’
Truth was stranger than fiction in the life of the man who was called the greatest spy of all time
HE’S back. Starting tomorrow at 9pm the nostalgia television station Talking Pictures TV (Channel 81 Freeview), will be re-showing the classic 1983 Thames Television series Reilly, Ace Of Spies, starring Sam Neill in the title role.
But who exactly was Sidney Reilly? One of the most enigmatic figures of the early 20th Century, secret agent, serial womaniser, rogue, murderer, forger, thief, gambler, confidence trickster, charmer, hero, villain – Reilly was all of these.
The character described as “the greatest spy the world has ever known” was involved in – and influenced
– some of the biggest international events of his time.
Yet even though he was always at the centre of the action, his life was shrouded in mystery. Consequently, for historians, separating the man from the myth has not been easy.
Nothing about Reilly could be taken at face value. Even his name was false. He told people at various times he was the son of an Irish sea captain, an Irish clergyman and a Russian aristocrat.
In fact, he is thought to have been born Shlomo Rosenblum, into a Jewish family in a part of Tsarist Russia which is now Ukraine.
Rosenblum came to Britain via France, where, along with an accomplice, he is thought to have robbed two Italian anarchists on a train. One of the anarchists died from his wounds.
In London, he went into business selling patent medicines and became involved in revolutionary antiTsarist émigré circles. These groups came under the watchful eye of the authorities.William Melville, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch, recruited Rosenblum as a paid informer. It was Melville who helped create the Sidney Reilly persona.
He saw in the resourceful Russian a man who could be of great use to the British state. Certainly Reilly was a man who was prepared to go to almost any lengths to get what he wanted.
IN HIS book Ace Of Spies: The True Story Of Sidney Reilly, Andrew Cook says that the future “Master Spy” may have been involved in the murder of his first wife’s husband.
The Reverend Hugh Thomas bought patent medicine from Reilly. He introduced him to his wife Margaret. She and Reilly then had an affair. Reverend Thomas made a will leaving everything to his wife, but was found dead in bed in a hotel only a week later.
A “Dr TW Andrew” who just happened to be staying at the hotel examined the body and gave the cause of death as a “fainting of the heart”. Margaret arranged a hasty burial for her husband, inherited his money and later married Reilly. But intriguingly, no doctor by the name of “TW Andrew” existed on the medical register.Was it Reilly?
In 1901 the spy and his wife arrived in Port Arthur, the Far Eastern base of Russia’s Pacific fleet. Under the guise of a timber merchant, Reilly acted as the gobetween for the Chinese engineer who gave Russia’s foe, Japan, detailed information about Russia’s harbour defences. This helped Japan launch a surprise attack on Port Arthur in 1904 and defeat Russia.
Reilly’s services were enlisted again that same year when the British Government was worried about losing out on lucrative oil rights in the Middle East. An engineer, William Knox D’Arcy, had obtained oil concessions in Persia and was in negotiations to sell them to the French de Rothschilds.
In Reilly, Ace Of Spies, the book by Robin Bruce Lockhart on which the TV series is based, Sidney Reilly disguises himself as a Catholic priest to gain access to
Baron de Rothschild’s yacht where the negotiations are taking place off the French Riviera. He says he is seeking donations to a religious charity. He then secretly tells D’Arcy the British will better any offer. D’Arcy breaks off the negotiations, and sells to the British. Cook casts doubt on this story. But we do know a “Mr and Mrs Reilly” were staying at a hotel close to the Rothschild yacht in June, when negotiations were revived. In any event, in 1909 the Anglo-Persian
Oil Company was founded, which was later British Petroleum (BP).
In 1918, as British agent Code Name ST1, Reilly sailed for Russia. The new Bolshevik government had pulled out of the First World War (Russia had been on the Allies’ side), causing British alarm. Reilly’s mission was to gather intelligence, but the spy had grander ideas. In full dress uniform he headed boldly for the Kremlin, and declaring himself to be an emissary of the British Prime Minister, demanded to see Lenin, the Russian leader. His wish wasn’t granted but he did speak to Lenin’s aide. Reilly planned an audacious counter-revolution in Russia.
In Moscow he assumed the identity of a Greek businessmen, while in Petrograd he disguised himself as a Turkish merchant. But his plans were thwarted when a young woman shot and wounded Lenin and the Bolsheviks unleashed a Red Terror against their opponents. Reilly escaped from the country posing as a German art dealer. Back in Britain he was awarded the Military Cross. In 1925 he was, however, lured
back to
Russia through what he thought was an anti-Bolshevik organisation, “The Trust” but which was in fact controlled by the Soviet secret police, OGPU. He was arrested in Moscow. On the likely orders of Stalin – Soviet leader after Lenin’s 1924 death – Reilly was executed in November 1925. Or was he?
A number of writers claimed that Reilly defected to the Soviets and the corpse photographed in the mortuary was not his. However a leading photo-forensic analyst, Kenneth Linge, believes the body was indeed that of Reilly.
Years later, a personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence struck up an acquaintance with Robert Bruce Lockhart, who had worked with Reilly in Russia in 1918 plotting against the Soviets, had himself written a bestseller spy memoir and was father of Reilly author Robin. That personal assistant was Ian Fleming.
Fleming later admitted that he had created his character of James Bond after reading about the exploits of Sidney Reilly.