Ebook: Most Secret Agent of Empire: Reginald Teague-Jones, Master Spy of the Great Game

Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. Childhood in Liverpool and St Petersburg -- 2. From the Punjab to the North West Frontier: The Making of a Gentleman of the Raj -- 3. The Persian Gulf and the Hunt for 'Mr Wassmuss' -- 4. Ashkhabad and the Transcaspian Episode -- 5. The Legend of the Twenty-Six Commissars: Teague-Jones, Hero or Villain? -- 6. The Retreat of the White Armies: From Constantinople to the Caucasus (1919-21) -- 7. Ronald Sinclair, Imperial Traveller -- 8. Ronald Sinclair in America (1941-60) -- Epilogue -- Note on the Sources -- Notes -- Index -- Persia and the Russian Revolution -- The Anglo-American relationship and the test of India -- The transfer of power -- British Security Coordination at the heart of Anglo-American relations during the Second World War -- The colonial eye behind the camera -- 'Zobeida and I': A Persian Odyssey -- Persian adventures: to India by the back door -- A nest of spies in Constantinople -- 'A malicious propaganda legend' (Teague-Jones, November 1979) -- The Caucasian imbroglio -- Teague-Jones and the Soviet-Turkish Entente -- Baku: 1918 -- The drama of the twenty-six commissars: the anatomy of an execution -- Reginald Teague-Jones: 'Political Representative in Transcaspia' -- From improvisation to retreat: the Transcaspian episode -- A Secret Mission at the gates of Central Asia in 1918 -- An Englishman in Russia -- The tribulations of the 'German Lawrence' in the Persian Gulf -- The Great War and Persia -- The training-ground: the North West Frontier Province -- An ambition: joining the Indian Political Service -- Red Sunday: memories of the 1905 Revolution -- Liverpool: birthplace and departure point -- Pendennis Street.;Dubbed an "agent of British imperialism" by Joseph Stalin, Reginald Teague-Jones (1889- 1988) was the quintessential English spy whose exceptional story is recounted in this new biography. He studied in St Petersburg, participated in the 1905 Revolution and spent the rest of his life working for various branches of British secret intelligence. Plunging into the Great Game, he participated in daring operations against the Bolsheviks and tracked down a turbulent German agent, Wilhelm Wassmuss, who was spreading anti-British propaganda in Persia. Teague-Jones was also held responsible for the execution of 'the 26 Commissars' after the fall of the Baku Commune in 1918. This became one of the Soviet Union's most powerful cults of martyrology, inspiring a poem by Yesenin, a Brodsky painting, a 1933 feature film and an immense monument. Shortly after, Teague-Jones changed his name to Ronald Sinclair and adopted a secret persona for the next five decades, for part of which he worked undercover in the United States as an expert on Indian, Soviet and Middle-Eastern affairs, possibly in collaboration with the OSS, the new American secret service. In his swan song in espionage he kept a gimlet eye on the Soviet delegation to the UN in New York. For these reasons, and many others besides, Reginald Teague-Jones is the most important British spy you have never heard of.