Posted by Peter Ceresole on September 23, 2010 at 04:23:56 user PeterC.
In Reply to: MI6's Authorized Biography and Arthur Ransome posted by Dave Thewlis on September 21, 2010 at 19:07:19:
According to Keith Jeffery's just-published bio of MI6 1909-1949 (as recorded in today's Guardian), "Graham Greene, Arthur Ransome and Somerset Maugham all worked for MI6"
It does rather depend on what is meant by 'worked for'. They were journalists working in Russia; it would have been quite extraordinary if they hadn't been debriefed by the intelligence services. After working for a few weeks in Iraq, and in the course of it traveling about and meeting with Saddam Hussein, I got a friendly phone call from a pleasant spook who checked out on what I'd seen. I really couldn't tell him anything he didn't know already, but presumably somewhere here's a record of the conversation.
AR, of course, would have been an infinitely more valuable and better informed source, but journos were routinely used. It was up to them how revealing they would be.