Eric Roberts (spy)

Eric Arthur Roberts (18 June 1907 - 17 or 18 December 1972) was an MI5 agent during the Second World War under the alias Jack King. By posing as a Gestapo agent, and infiltrating fascist groups in the UK, Roberts was able to prevent secret information finding its way to Germany. Roberts continued to work for the security services after the war, notably in Vienna, but it was a time of great anxiety in the services due to the suspicions surrounding double agents such as the Cambridge Five. Roberts never felt completely accepted by MI5 due to his different social background, and moving to a less active desk role did not suit him so well as his wartime role.

Roberts was born in Wivelsfield in June 1907, the son of Percival Arthur Garfield Roberts and his wife Maud (née Green). At the time of the 1911 census, the family was living in Penzance, where his father worked for the Western Union Cable Company. Eric eventually settled with his family in Epsom.

He became a bank clerk in the Euston Road branch of the Westminster Bank in London. He spoke fluent Spanish and some German following holidays there in 1932 and 1934. He married Alice Lilian Audrey Sprague (born 1900 Droylesden, Lancashire), the daughter of William Sprague, a railway civil engineer, and his wife Margaret, in spring 1934.

Roberts was recruited at the age of 17 (in 1925) by the MI5 spymaster Maxwell Knight. This was during his employment as a bank clerk for Westminster Bank After Roberts' employer was asked to release him for war service, one of his bosses wrote back, expressing surprise as to why they would choose someone so unremarkable for important work: "what are the particular and especial qualifications of Mr Roberts - which we have not been able to perceive - for some particular work of national military importance which would take him away from his normal military call-up in October?"

By May 1940, he was posing as a German Gestapo agent named "Jack King", a member of the Einsatzgruppe London, to obtain information about Nazi sympathisers in the UK. There had been speculation that King was John Bingham, until the release of files by MI5 in October 2014. Documents in the UK National Archives have now shown that Roberts ran a hugely dangerous and very successful deception.

...
Wikipedia