The intriguing tale of the ABC reporter and the aristocratic spy

According to his former MI6 colleague, Malcolm Muggeridge, Milo was interrogated; but as some 200 files relating to debriefings still remain closed, it is difficult to know what he knew. George Carey-Foster, the head of the Foreign Office’s security branch, claimed no suspicion had ever fallen on Milo. Perhaps he would say that?

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Tony concludes: “The truth was complicated, the players were all friends, they owed one another loyalty, and the facts, if unearthed, could only reflect badly on all of them and on the Foreign Office itself.”

In January 1954, Milo suddenly resigned, retiring to the other Malahide – Malahide Castle, north of Dublin, the family fortress and seat since 1185. He had inherited it and his title on the death of a cousin in 1948 and lived there with his unmarried sister, Rose. Scotland paints a vivid picture of the Anglo-Irish twilight. Milo would dine at one end of an enormous table while Rosie, “as reserved and rigid as her brother”, ate in silence at the other. Milo slept in a single bed in a spartan cell in one tower; Rose slept in another turret beside a copy of Debrett’s and Longman’s Pronunciation Guide.

In September 1954, Milo was recalled to serve as consul-general for the Kingdom of Laos, and then its ambassador. En route, to save the bother of laundry, he threw 100 underpants and singlets into the Indian Ocean and, finding no suitable accommodation, he wrote to the foreign secretary, “I have arrived and assumed charge, and until further notice I am staying with the prime minister”. En poste Milo fell hopelessly in love with his No. 2, 25-year-old Philip Ziegler, later a distinguished biographer, who never knew.

He resigned – permanently – in 1957, was honoured with a CMG, and returned to his two Malahides, to travel, and to his collections of coins, stamps and plants. He died suddenly, peacefully, painlessly, at 60, on an Aegean cruise in April 1973.

Tony’s reaction? “My life was my own again now – but polished by six years of closeness with an older man of great culture. I had much to thank him for, and I knew I would never forget him.”

While one can’t say “amazing what a difference Milo made”, it was an extraordinary life – and friendship.

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