Sir Reginald Hoare

A later comer to our basement was Sir Reginald Hoare, a member of the great banking family, known, for some reason, to his intimates as 'Ralph'.

When Johnny asked for a representative of the Foreign Office to become a permanent member of our section, Sir Reginald, who was then unemployed, came to us on the recommendation of the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

This distinguished diplomat had been H M Minister in Rumania until Hitler absorbed that country into the Axis. He was an elderly, grey-haired man with a pronounced stoop. He contributed positively nothing to our activities and told me once that he had only taken the job because, like Kipling's elephant's child, he suffered from 'a satiable curtiosity', and could not bear to be kept out of secrets of the high direction of the war.

Johnny, who had an ingrained distrust of everyone not wearing uniform, told him as little as possible, showed impatience at his slow, deliberate manner of speaking and at times was downright rude to him. This engendered in him an intense dislike of Johnny who, he once said resentfully, 'treated me like a footman'. Being a law unto himself, he put in only a few hours a day at the office just to learn what was going on. But he had a subtle wit, a lovely sense of humour, and James, Neil and I, whose office he shared, delighted in his companionship. We christened him 'Ambassador', and always addressed him in that way.

Source: 'The Deception Planners' p 131.