Alan Hillgarth

Captain Alan Hugh Hillgarth CMG OBE (1899–1978) was a British adventure novelist and member of the intelligence services, perhaps best known for his activities in Spain during and after the Spanish Civil War.^[1] Hillgarth appears as one of the actual historical figures in C. J. Sansom's 2006 novel, Winter in Madrid, and also in María Dueñas's 2009 novel, El tiempo entre costuras (English translation 2011, The Time in Between (US), The Seamstress (UK)), as well its Spanish-language 2013 television adaptation.

Early years

Hillgarth was born George Hugh Jocelyn Hillgarth Evans (called "Hugh" by his family) at 121, Harley Street, Marylebone, London, second of three boys and two girls of Willmott Henderson Hillgarth Evans, a leading London surgeon specialising in skin diseases, and his wife Ann Frances, daughter of Rev. George Piercy, a pioneer Methodist minister in China.^[2] Hugh changed his name to "Alan Hugh Hillgarth Evans" in 1926, and in 1928 discontinued use of the surname "Hillgarth Evans" in favour of "Hillgarth".^[3][4]

Career

In the book Roosevelt & Churchill: Men of Secrets, the historian David Stafford gives an account of Hillgarth's links with Winston Churchill in prewar Majorca, where Hillgarth was the British consul. By the outbreak of World War II, Hillgarth was Naval Attaché in Madrid, where he handled a huge number of clandestine intelligence operations on behalf of the British government. He had a prominent role in Operation Mincemeat in which faked documents were used to fool the Germans about Allied plans for the invasion of Sicily. He was successful at simultaneously appearing to try to retrieve the documents before the Germans saw them but making sure that they did, all without arousing suspicion. His work here led Ian Fleming to refer to Hillgarth as a 'war-winner'.^[5]

In his book Men of War, Hillgarth wrote that "adventure was once a noble appellation borne proudly by men such as Raleigh and Drake... [but is now] reserved for the better-dressed members of the criminal classes."

Hillgarth was also a member of the strange and extravagant 'Sacambaya Exploration Company,' which, in 1928, went in search of Bolivian gold. A number of British adventurers set forth on a romantic enterprise with modern machinery to excavate a treasure believed to amount to more than 12 million pounds. It turned out to be a scam, as the maps and documents turned out to have been fakes.^[6]

Family

A son was the historian Jocelyn Nigel Hillgarth FBA FSA.^[7]

References

1. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
2. Franco's Friends: How British Intelligence Helped Bring Franco to Power in Spain, Peter Day, Biteback Publishing Ltd, 2011
3. Man of War, Duff Hart-Davis, Arrow Books, 2013, pp. 9–10, 76–78
4. Ian Fleming and Operation Golden Eye: Keeping Spain out of World War II, Mark Simmons, Casemate Publishing, 2018
5. Macintyre, Ben (2010). Operation Mincemeat. The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-0-7475-9868-8.
6. . News from Peru - Peruvian Times. 26 August 2011. Archived from the original on 12 February 2020. Retrieved 14 October 2023.
7. "Society of Antiquaries of London Online Newsletter: SALON". eepurl.com. Retrieved 11 July 2023.

Further reading

• Hart-Davis, Duff (2012). Man of War: The Secret Life of Captain Alan Hillgarth, Officer, Adventurer, Agent. London: Century. ISBN 978-1-846-05971-1.