Template:Short description Template:For Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox spy Sir Christopher Keith Curwen, Template:Post-nominals (9 April 1929 – 18 December 2013) was a British Intelligence officer specialising in South East Asia who was Head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1985 to 1989.
CareerEdit
Curwen was educated at Sherborne School and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge after which he was commissioned into the 4th Queen's Own Hussars in 1948, serving in Malaya.<ref>Burke's Peerage and Gentry</ref><ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref> He joined SIS in 1952 and was posted to Thailand in 1954 and Vientiane, Laos in 1956.<ref name=":0" /> He returned to the service's London headquarters in 1958, had another spell in Bangkok from 1961 and then two years in Kuala Lumpur. He was at one time married to a woman from Burma;<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> they were later divorced.<ref name=":1" />
Curwen spent three years as SIS liaison officer in Washington D.C. from 1968 and was then head of station in Geneva.<ref>MI6 - 50 years of Special Operations, by Stephen Dorril, Page 753, Harper Collins, 2001, Template:ISBN</ref> He was deputy to Sir Colin Figures from 1980 and succeeded him as Chief of the Service in 1985.<ref>Cloaked Dagger</ref> His tenure was notable for the successful exfiltration from Moscow of the KGB officer and British agent Oleg Gordievsky.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=":0" />
His obituary in The Times noted: "He possessed a romantic patriotism that belied his hard-headed persona."<ref name=":0" />
ReferencesEdit
NotesEdit
- Sir Christopher Curwen entry in Who's Who
- Curwen entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
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