Cambridge-based author Christopher Andrew, emeritus professor of modern and contemporary history and former chair of the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge, has written a new book about the fascinating life of Cyril Bertram Mills, titled The Spy Who Came in from the Circus.
For Mills was not only the director of the famed Bertram Mills Circus and a fellow Cambridge graduate (both he and Christopher are alumni of Corpus Christi College, where Christopher is also a life fellow), he also led a remarkable double life as a secret agent.
Mills’ career in British intelligence led to him obtaining the best aerial intelligence on Nazi rearmament for MI6 before World War II, for example, recruiting and becoming first case officer of the best double agent of the war (codenamed GARBO), and working part-time for MI5 or 6 or both “without being paid a penny” during the Cold War.
Christopher, who is also the former official historian of the Security Service (MI5) and chairman of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, says: “Circuses were absolutely central to British live entertainment, between when they really got going immediately after the First World War, to about 1970, at which point their popularity began to decline.
“I don’t think there was a child in the country, let alone their parents, that didn’t know the name Bertram Mills Circus.
“Now, if you’re going to be a spy, the first thing you need is good cover – because you can’t be a spy if people either know you’re a spy, or strongly suspect you of being a spy.
“If you have these childhood memories of a circus, in which a ringmaster dressed with a nice red top, probably with a whip and a couple of lions behind them come in, the last thing that anybody is going to say is ‘I bet he’s a spy’. So it was tremendously good cover.”
Christopher notes that the best British circuses, as well as the best continental circuses, had “strong international links – just like film nowadays”.
“You will find in the book probably the first picture you’ve ever seen of Adolf Hitler at the circus,” he states. “One of his favourite speaking venues in the 1920s was the main circus in Munich. It’s the Krone Circus.
“So by this extraordinary chance, Cyril Bertram Mills’ closest foreign connections – he was a German speaker, amongst other things – were with the circus which was one of Hitler’s favourite locations for delivering his lengthy speeches.
“This meant that when he became a spy for MI6 during the 1930s, because he already had these regular contacts with German circuses, he could fly over the new Messerschmitt factory and the Germans never suspected a thing.
“How do we know that? Well because the German ambassador in Britain, who later becomes Hitler’s foreign minister, von Ribbentrop, actually accepts invitations to the Bertram Mills Circus – and not simply to the circus, but to its annual big dinner, where he’s one of the guests of honour. So the cover is absolutely perfect.”
Sir Winston Churchill also plays a key role in the Bertram Mills story.
“Even though Churchill has produced some excellent biographers – he was one of the excellent biographers of himself – none of them mentions his passion for the circus,” observes Christopher.
“Now in the book, if you just limit yourself to the pictures to start with, you’ll find a painting done by Winston Churchill and it’s a picture of four of the elephants at Bertram Mills Circus.
“He was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, in 1928, and the idea that [Jeremy] Hunt or Kwasi Kwarteng before him would have done oil paintings of elephants and circuses while they were Chancellor of the Exchequer is extremely remote.”
Christopher adds: “Churchill was a cheerful fellow; he smiled a lot and he chuckled a lot, but the only picture you have ever seen of him absolutely losing it, helpless with laughter, is in the book, because it was only when he went to Bertram Mills Circus and looked at the clowns – one of whom became an OBE, by the way – that he becomes helpless with laughter.”
Christopher comments on the fact that Churchill played an important part in the founding of the intelligence services, as he was one of the ministers in the government that set up both MI5 and MI6, and also what is now GCHQ.
“So there’s that, again, important link between Bertram Mills and Winston Churchill and intelligence,” he says.
Amazingly, nothing about Mills’ secret career ever came to light until he was over 80 years old (he died in 1991 at the age of 89), with nobody ever suspecting that the glamorous world of pre-war circus entertainment had had such close links with espionage and surveillance.
Has Christopher long been familiar with the story of Cyril Bertram Mills? “What I’ve long been familiar with is the history of intelligence,” he replies, “and what I became aware of, but only in recent years, is the intermittent links between two professions which apparently have nothing to do with each other – that’s the entertainment business and intelligence.
“Because if you’re a star, you want to be on television, you want to appear in public, you want to get as much publicity as possible.
“If you’re a spy, the last thing that you want to do is get a lot of publicity for the fact that you’re one of the world’s best spies.
“So the spies that we find out about during their lifetimes are either failed spies, because people have found out about them, or they’re dead spies…”
Christopher notes that what Bertram Mills learned from the entertainment business, and from the circus in particular – which became relevant to his subsequent career as a spy – was “deception and illusion”.
“Nowadays, there are deceptions and deepfakes and so on practically everywhere, but there didn’t used to be,” he explains.
“The most exciting deceptions and illusions were put on in circuses, so during the Second World War… actually I think as a category, the least common stories that get talked about nowadays are British success stories; I mean you’re spoilt for choice, particularly recently, when it comes to British failure stories.
“But during the Second World War, I think there is no reasonable doubt that we were the best intelligence service in the world, and that helped to shorten the war.
“Why? Because through codebreaking, as well as other things, we learnt more of what the enemy was up to, or what the enemy intended to do to us, than any power had ever done before.
“But also – this is where Bertram Mills’ experience in deception fits in – we foisted on the enemy more disinformation than any power had ever foisted on any enemy. That sounds like an exaggeration but it isn’t.”
Christopher gives as an example the disinformation that was put out ahead of the D-Day landings 80 years ago, when the enemy was made to believe that they would take place elsewhere.
“There was more than one, but the man who mainly put this one across on the Germans was the most celebrated double agent in British history, codenamed GARBO,” he says, “and he was recruited by Cyril Bertram Mills, who thought that Garbo was the world’s best film actress, and that’s why he chose the name.
“But he’d already done things like this in the circus. His experience in deception, through the circus, meant that he had more experience of real success in that period than anybody else who was doing it.”
As well as being a celebrated author, Christopher served as co-editor of Intelligence and National Security, and has also presented BBC radio and television documentaries, including the Radio Four series What If?.
He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Toronto, and the Australian National universities, and has had 16 books published, including The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5, which was an international bestseller.
The Spy Who Came in from the Circus: The Secret Life of Cyril Bertram Mills, published by Biteback Publishing, had its official launch at Claridge’s in London on Wednesday, 24 April, followed by a Cambridge launch – at the McCrum Lecture Theatre – on Friday, 26 April. The hardback version of the book, priced £25, is available now.
