Ted Allbeury Obituary 1

Ted Allbeury - Obituaries

THE GUARDIAN Tuesday 3 January 2006

Ted Allbeury - Respected spy writer who had served as a secret agent in the war and the cold war

Michael Johnson

Ted Allbeury, who has died aged 88, was the most productive of the internationally recognised spy writers of recent years, at one point writing four novels in one year under his own name, plus others under the pen names Richard Butler and Patrick Kelly. His books were among those most borrowed from public libraries, and one year he received one penny more in public lending rights payments than romantic novelist Barbara Cartland.

The author of more than 40 novels and numerous radio plays, Ted came to writing late in life (he was 56 when his first book, A Choice of Enemies, appeared in 1973). This portrait of his love for his wife, Grazyna, and daughter, Sammy, exposes the shabby treatment MI6 metes out to officers who break the rules. It was written mainly as a form of catharsis: to overcome the pain Ted experienced during the long kidnapping of two of his children (it was presumed by his wartime enemies, no one knows for sure), but significantly drew on his wartime experiences as an undercover intelligence officer with the Special Operations Executive (SOE). On more than one occasion Ted's life was nearly snuffed out, but fate intervened. Such events were to instil his work not only with a sense of foreboding but also of release - for in Allbeury's world twists of fate can also turn people's lives around.

Ted was born in Stockport, Cheshire, and educated at King Edward's grammar school, Aston, Birmingham. He was a foundry worker and draughtsman before the war. A tall, imposing man, with an alert mind and an ease with languages, he served as an SOE intelligence officer from 1940 to 1947, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Ted was a self-starter and after the war made his way in advertising, running his own agency, JW Southcombe. In 1964, he became managing director of a pirate radio station, King Radio, which he successfully revamped with a nostalgia format and renamed Radio 390, after its wavelength. Following the forced closure of the station in 1967, he returned to run an advertising business in Tunbridge Wells until 1981.

Each successive generation of espionage writers has consciously reacted against its predecessors - Eric Ambler and Graham Greene wanted a new kind of villain; John le Carré and Len Deighton wanted to focus on the ethics of spying. Ted's work was not so much a reaction to other spy fiction writers, but an extension of the work that Deighton and others had begun: first, he wanted to deepen the wartime thriller; and second, he aimed to make unusual common cause with enemy agents as human beings, thus exposing the power relations on both sides as his real target. The human cost for agents of the state on both sides of the iron curtain was his theme.

Ted's voice and style in his early books were drawn from his fond affection for the hardnosed American thriller. He added his own touching humanity and experiences to ingeniously develop the labyrinthine connections between communism and the second world war, where modern spies resurrect the past to advantage. In Snowball (1974), Polish/British agent Tad Anders investigates a clever Soviet propaganda ploy to show collusion between Hitler and the Americans; whereas in one of his best historical novels, The Lantern Network (1978), he explores why a French Resistance network was rolled up. The story was delightfully revived in the sequel As Time Goes By (1994), from the perspective of women volunteer agents parachuted into France.

As Ted became perhaps the most internationally respected author of conviction in his chosen field, he was given access to top secret information. The most astounding was from a senior CIA intelligence officer concerning the double life of Andrei Aarons - a Soviet network handler in the US who had access to five US presidents. Show Me a Hero (1992) was not a thriller, for Ted was now a subtle novelist of people's lives caught up in world events. This was one of the first books selected to be a specially limited edition by the Scorpion Press, with an appreciation by his old friend Len Deighton.

In some ways his later books such as The Line-crosser (1993) and The Reckoning (1999), which deals with how people make choices, are reminiscent in tone and message of the best Somerset Maugham short stories. Like Maugham he asked the most uncomplicated, yet important of questions: To whom do I belong? Whom do I serve? At the end of No Place to Hide (1986), a tale of a state killer having second thoughts, the protagonist is asked: "Tell me what we have to do?" He simply replies: "We have to live our lives so that we are never tempted to do anyone any harm. We give up all forms of aggression as individuals. Greed, ambition, indifference are all kinds of personal aggression. We just have to live quietly and lovingly." Ted did just that with his family and friends.

Grazyna died in 1999. His son and three daughters survive him.

Len Deighton writes:

No one knew Ted very well. I saw him only now and again. And yet Ted was one of my close friends and I believe that he also felt close to me. Ted was not a renowned drinking companion and didn't like social gatherings large or small. His life was given to his family and his work. He was a notable success in both these endeavours: his wife Graz adored him and his powerful writing talent is evident in his fine books.

Ted was a large, muscular man with a quick wit that did not match his hesitant and thoughtful responses. He had the easy confidence that comes with strength of mind and body, and could have been mistaken for the foundry worker he had once been. I believe he was the only British secret agent to have parachuted into Nazi Germany. He remained there until the Allied armies arrived. Then, with Ted appointed to a senior and important intelligence role for the occupying army, he became entangled in the arrangements for Barbara Hutton's divorce from Cary Grant. It was one of the few personal stories that Ted enjoyed recounting.

During the cold war, Ted was running agents across the border that divided communist East Germany from the west. His luck ran out and the Russians left him nailed to a kitchen table in a farmhouse. Practised torturers, they made sure he had a chance to survive and take the story back to his fellow agents. The war never ended for him. His children were kidnapped and he pursued them to South America. Ted never told me what happened after that.

I urged Ted to write his memoirs but he could not be persuaded. He said he'd signed an official document that prevented him doing so. Well, that's our loss, along with Ted himself: a hero, patriot, family man, friend and outstanding writer.

Theodore (Ted) Edward le Bouthillier Allbeury, novelist, born October 24 1917; died December 4 2005