A London Spy Walk
This article is part of the free ebook Need to Know, which can be read on this website or downloaded here.
‘A South Kensington address is definitely an asset’.
It sounds like an estate agent’s blurb, but it’s actually a secret agent’s. It’s from a report on London written by a Soviet spy in the 1930s, seized by MI5 during the war. The agent recommended South Kensington as a base because it had a good reputation with the police—so furtive-looking men meeting in cafés would be less likely to be questioned.
The whole of Kensington and Chelsea is teeming with espionage locations, in fact. To get a flavour, here’s a quick tour—and don’t forget to check for tails!
First, take the Tube to South Kensington. Head west on Pelham Street and turn left down Old Brompton Road. Take another left at Roland Gardens, turn right to keep on it, and then take a left into Drayton Gardens. If you peek into Holly Mews about halfway down, you’ll find Grove Court. The late-Victorian basement flat at number 18 once belonged to the mother of Kim Philby, the notorious double agent who spied for the KGB while heading up MI6’s anti-Soviet section. In 1955, Philby held a press conference in this flat to gloat over the fact that he had been officially cleared of being ‘the Third Man’. But eight years later the trap finally closed in on him in Beirut, and he fled to Moscow, never to return.
Walk back onto Drayton Gardens and head down to number 102a. In 1941, it was at this address that the poet Stephen Spender and his bride Natasha celebrated their wedding—at the time it was being rented by their friend Cyril Connolly. And the spy connection? The reception was attended by, among others, Philby’s fellow double agent Guy Burgess and the Hungarian-born architect Ernö Golfinger, whose surname Ian Fleming would later appropriate for one of his best-known villains. One can’t help wonder whether Burgess and Goldfinger chatted at the party, about life behind the Iron Curtain, perhaps—or ways to cheat at golf.
Head back down Drayton Gardens. Cross Fulham Road and head all the way down until you reach the King’s Road. Turn left and walk up the King’s Road, past Chelsea Town Hall (a good meeting point according to the 1930s Soviet handbook), until you reach Wellington Square on your right. In Fleming’s novels, James Bond lived in a comfortable flat in a ‘plane-tree’d square’ off the King’s Road. And according to his biographer John Pearson, this is the most likely candidate.
A very short walk from 007 is the address of another famous fictional secret agent: George Smiley. Head back up to the King’s Road and cross over into Bywater Street—John le Carré’s shy but brilliant spy lived at number 9. It’s probably a better location than Bond’s flat, as cul-de-sacs are harder to keep under surveillance.
Now head back up the King’s Road and turn left at Anderson Street. This soon becomes Sloane Avenue, and at number 87 you’ll find Chelsea Cloisters. During the Second World War, this rather posh block of flats was used by the Special Operations Executive to debrief agents on their return from missions overseas. My fictional MI6 agent, Paul Dark, also lives here.
Keep heading up Sloane Avenue and it becomes Pelham Road. Soon we’ll be back at South Kensington Tube, but if the walk has made you hungry or parched, take a right onto Thurloe Square and then a left onto Thurloe Street. At number 20, you’ll find Café Daquise. This cheap, cosy Polish restaurant opened in 1947, and during the Cold War was a stomping ground for Eastern European spies, as well as Christine Keeler, who used to meet here with Yevgeny Ivanov, the senior naval attaché at the Russian Embassy. Savour the atmosphere over some barszcz, round it off with some vodka, and then head up Thurloe Street and back to South Kensington Tube again.