Vernon Kell - Career

Career

Born in Great Yarmouth in 1873, Kell was the son of Major Waldegrave Kell of the 38th Foot and his wife, Georgiana Augusta Konarska. She was daughter of a Polish émigré, Aleksander Konarski, a surgeon with the 1st Podhalian Rifle Regiment who had fought in the November Uprising and had been awarded the V.M. (Gold, 4th class) and his English wife.

After graduating from Sandhurst, Kell was commissioned into the South Staffordshire Regiment and fought in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. As he could speak German, Italian, French and Polish with equal facility, he served and studied in China and Russia and subsequently learned to speak their respective languages.

While he served as an intelligence staff in Tientsin, he was also the foreign correspondent of the Daily Telegraph.

On his return to London from China in 1902 Kell was employed as a German intelligence analyst at the War Office until 1906, eventually rising to the rank of staff captain.

Rising public fears of German espionage in the UK precipitated the need for an official government intelligence agency, consequently in 1909 Kell was selected by the War Office and the Admiralty as one of two officers, alongside Mansfield Smith-Cumming, to head the newly formed Secret Service Bureau. The two officers decided to divide intelligence concerns thusly: Kell took responsibility for domestic concerns, whilst Cumming was to oversee foreign matters. However their working relationship was a fraught one with Cumming advocating the separation of the Bureau's work into two distinct departments, which was officially confirmed in 1910. These two distinct sections were later retitled as the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service (now commonly known as Mi5 and Mi6 respectively).

During World War I, Kell headed the MI5 section dealing with the Indian seditionist movement in Europe, called MI5(g). Among Kell's officers worked ex-ICS officers Robert Nathan and H.L Stephenson. He worked at the time close to the Special Branch of Scotland Yard headed by Basil Thomson, and was successful in tracing the works of Indian revolutionaries who worked alongside the Germans during the war.

In May 1940 Kell was removed from office by Winston Churchill, he was knighted for his services shortly before his death in 1942.

Kell was the longest serving head of any UK government department during the twentieth century, clocking up what one might term an impressive three decades at the helm of the Security Service.

While Director General of the British Security Service he was known as 'K'.