Mr Jones - The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Life and Death of Gareth Jones: The Life and Death of Gareth Jones

By Martin Shipton

Murdered in Mongolia in 1935 aged only 29, the Welsh investigative journalist Gareth Jones is a national hero in Ukraine for being the first reporter to reveal the truth about the Holodomor – the 1932-33 genocide inflicted on Ukraine by the Soviet Union during which over four million people perished.

A graduate of Aberystwyth and Cambridge universities, Jones – fluent in Welsh, English, Russian, French and German - was talented, well-connected and determined to discover the truth behind the momentous political events of the post-war period. He travelled widely to report on Mussolini's Italy, the fledgling Irish Free State, the Depression-ravaged United States, and was the first foreign journalist to travel with Hitler after the Nazis had taken power in Germany.

Jones' quest for truth also drew him to the Soviet Union where his reporting of the Holodomor incurred the wrath of Stalin who banned Jones from ever returning. Within two years, on the eve of his 30th birthday, Jones was shot dead by Chinese bandits with links to the NKVD, the Soviet Union's secret police, and is buried in his hometown of Barry in Wales.

Drawing upon Jones’ articles, notebooks and private correspondence, Martin Shipton, the highly respected political journalist at Jones’ former newspaper, the Western Mail, reveals the remarkable yet tragically short life of this fascinating and determined Welshman who pioneered the role of investigative journalism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Welsh Academic Press
• Release date: Jul 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781860571565

Martin Shipton

Martin Shipton is Political Editor-at-Large at the Western Mail. His previous books include Political Chameleon: In Search of George Thomas (Welsh Academic Press, 2017).  

Book preview

Part One

Broadcasting at KFWB, the Warner Bros-owned radio station in Los Angeles, January 1935. (© The Gareth Vaughan Jones Estate)

Jones, aged six, with his mother Annie Gwen in 1911. (© The Gareth Vaughan Jones Estate)

1

The Young Mr Jones

The Talented Linguist from Barry

‘I would a thousand times prefer to use my knowledge of languages with an aim to obtaining a position where I could meet interesting people of all nationalities and where I could really find out the characteristics of the nations of today; why there are wars, and how they could be prevented’

Gareth Vaughan Jones was born in Barry, less than 10 miles from Cardiff, the capital city of Wales. Although the town was not in an area that was still predominantly Welsh-speaking, he was brought up bilingually and was effortlessly articulate in Welsh and English – a fact that undoubtedly enriched his outlook, nurtured his fascination for languages and their associated cultures, and generated a desire to travel. His powerful intellect, natural inquisitiveness and gregarious nature provided the essential elements that enabled him to master three further languages: Russian, German and French.

His father, Major Edgar Jones, had been headmaster of Barry County School for Boys for six years when Gareth was born on 13 August 1905, and he continued in that role until 1933, two years before his son was murdered on the eve of his 30th birthday. Major Jones had become a highly respected member of the local community. He was born in Llanrhaedr-ym-Mochnant, a Welsh-speaking village in northern Montgomeryshire, was educated across the English border at Oswestry High School, and studied English and Celtic Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

After university he was an assistant master at his old school for three years before taking up an appointment at the age of 26 as headmaster of Llandeilo County School. Five years later he moved to Barry. By then he had already been made a member of the University of Wales’ Court (its governing council) – a remarkable attainment for one so young. He was a co-opted member of Barry’s education committee, becoming its chairman, and was the founding president of the Barry Cymmrodorion Society – the local branch of a distinguished organisation dedicated to the study and celebration of Wales’ culture. Meetings were initially held in Eryl, the family home in Barry. Through his prominent membership of the Welsh County Schools Association and more particularly of the Central Welsh Board, the predecessor body to the Welsh Joint Education Committee which also had school inspection responsibilities, Edgar Jones is said to have had considerable influence over changes to the school curriculum, when Latin was made non-compulsory and Geography, Art and Music were added.

Jones, aged seven, with his father, Edgar. (© The Gareth Vaughan Jones Estate)

During the First World War he was away from school for the duration, serving in the Territorial Army’s Glamorgan Fortress Royal Engineers, a unit of the Royal Engineers intended to defend Britain’s seaports, eventually becoming its commanding officer, and in 1920, when the National Eisteddfod was held in Barry, Major Jones was its vice chairman.

One of the school’s pupils, Barnett Janner, later a Liberal MP and then a Labour MP, regarded Edgar Jones as his mentor.

The son of Jewish immigrants from what is now in Lithuania, Janner was a brilliant student but his parents wanted him to leave school and join the family’s furniture business. Edgar Jones intervened and persuaded the boy’s father that it would be a terrible mistake for him to leave the school and not continue his education. Later, once he had made his way in public life, Janner wrote: ‘I know none of my contemporaries as students at the school who do not experience a thrill of pleasure when he or she meets Major Edgar Jones. Was it not he in the school and his family in the soirées and other functions who were responsible for creating the atmosphere of ease and happiness which prevailed?’

Barnett Janner – a pupil of Edgar Jones at Barry Grammar School.

On another occasion Janner commented: ‘He was 50 years ahead of his time in the scholastic profession and he had a great effect on me, as he did on the other students at the school.’ Speaking in 1948, at a meeting of the Cardiff and District Council of Christians and Jews, Janner said of the Major, by then aged 80: ‘The influence of that great Christian, Dr Jones, upon myself and my fellow students was of such a nature that there is none of us who does not look back upon the years of that influence with considerable pleasure, and who would not willingly go back to that man for guidance in any matter which might be perturbing them. He is a great Welshman and a man who understands what tolerance really means. He imparted to the students an understanding, which enabled us to live in harmony with each other.’ Janner subsequently became President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

When Jones retired, an appreciation published by the Welsh Secondary Schools Review concluded:

‘No estimate of Mr Edgar Jones would be complete … which did not take into account the wonderful charm of his personality. It was truly said that he has a ‘genius’ for friendship. His genial, inspiring presence, as well as his wisdom in counsel, have always been valuable assets to the [Welsh County Schools] Association, and his potent personality will be greatly missed.’

Upon his death in 1953, an anonymous tribute published in the same review stated:

‘Edgar Jones was indeed a most enthusiastic man, keen on a vast number of matters: his Territorial soldiering, adult education, music, art, literature, our colleges and our university. He had been a keen player of association football in his younger days, and later developed a great enthusiasm for the rugby game. Was he not the man whom I asked to let me have a shortlist of really distinguished Welsh rugby players who ought to be included in a biographical dictionary? And did he not swamp me with a list of more than 120? He did his best for the encouragement of Welsh publishing, and had a good knowledge of our literature. A source of great pride to him was the presence on his staff of [the distinguished Welsh language poet] R Williams Parry, and you will find in Dr Parry’s recent volume an englyn [a traditional Welsh four-line poem or quatrain written according to strict metrical rules] on his old chief.’

There can be no doubt that his father’s erudition and personality both helped to define the character of Gareth Jones. His mother too had a profound influence on him.

The Jones family circa 1930 (L to R): Gwyneth (GJ’s sister), Annie Gwen and Major Edgar (GJ’s parents) with Margaret Siriol (on Edgar’s lap), Gareth, Eirian (GJ’s sister and Margaret’s mother), and Auntie Winnie (Annie Gwen’s sister). (© The Gareth Vaughan Jones Estate)

John Hughes (1814-1889).

Annie Gwen Jones, whose family name was also Jones and who was brought up in Merthyr Tydfil, met Edgar while studying at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where she was one of the first women students admitted by the institution. After completing her studies, she went to eastern Ukraine to work for three years as a nanny to two granddaughters of John Hughes, the industrialist from Merthyr Tydfil who founded a steelworks in an unpopulated part of the countryside that was rich with coal and iron. Hughes died in July 1889, a few months before Annie Gwen Jones arrived to look after his son Arthur’s children.

The Hughes family home, Hughesovka, circa 1900.

The town founded by John Hughes, whose population quickly rose from zero to 50,000, was initially named Hughesovka (Yuzovka), was later renamed Stalino and is now known as Donetsk. The workers recruited by Hughes to work in his steelworks came mainly from Russia, a partial explanation for why many inhabitants of that region of the now-independent Ukraine maintain a strong linguistic and cultural attachment to Russia and is currently the centre of the breakaway yet unrecognised Donetsk People’s Republic, supported by Russia.

Many years later, in a BBC radio broadcast in December 1943, Annie Gwen Jones spoke of life in Hughesovka in a way that echoed the descriptive talents of her son: ‘When I was living in Russia there were only two classes of people. I was in a position to see the great differences between the two. The standard of living around the Mujiks – the common people – was very low and they weren’t unfamiliar with hunger/ famine in some regions. They lived in poor small houses of wood, of only one floor. They had no conveniences to provide comfort and health, only a large stove which almost filled the room. Often they would sleep on it at night. Of course, the workers’ houses in Hughesovka were far better. In every house you would see an ‘icon’, that is a sacred picture and there is not one house without its samovar, a vessel for making tea.’ She liked the Mujiks, seeing them as kind, unaffected and ‘truly religious in a simple and innocent way’. They were also patient and wise, full of common sense and humour but, like all Russians, superstitious.

The other class of people were, by contrast, ‘exceptionally cultured’. Mrs Jones wrote:

‘They would live in their large houses on their estates with a great number of workers and maids. They could speak many languages and their reading was immense. I was surprised more than once that they knew so much about the prime English writers of the time.’

At the time she was in Hughesovka, there were around 70 workers from Wales. Writing of the extreme temperatures, she stated:

‘I heard a young man from Rhymney lost his life in a sudden perilous snowstorm. The fiery heat of summer would bring with it many diseases like dysentery. I nearly died from this disease but for the care of an Armenian doctor who was one of the doctors at the works hospital. In 1892 cholera came to the town and we, the family, had to flee the place because of the riots which were caused by people’s fear and ignorance. The riots were important enough to be chronicled by the London papers ... But even having to leave Russia like this, in haste, I felt extremely sad in singing farewell to many friends there. I had a wonderful kindness from many, especially Mr and Mrs Arthur Hughes, and I had come to love the country and its people, and in these later days in rejoicing the Russians’ exceptional success.’

In an earlier memoir titled Impressions of Life on the Steppes of Russia, written around the year 1900 and discovered by her granddaughter Siriol in a damp cellar and in a poor state, Mrs Jones had written: ‘In Hughesovka we were a small band of Welsh and English in the midst of a mixed population of Russians, Poles, Jews, Tartars, French and Germans. The Russians of course predominating. An Armenian doctor saved my life when I developed typhoid fever.’

Annie Gwen (top right) with Arthur Hughes and his family. (© The Gareth Vaughan Jones Estate)

Returning to Wales, she married Edgar Jones, later moving with him and their children to Barry, where she became a magistrate, president of the local branch of the 20th Century Club – what would today be referred to as an international women’s networking organisation – and leader of its archaeology section for many years. She also chaired the women’s sub-committee of the local Employment Committee, as well as chairing the reception committee of the Eisteddfod. She was also a council member of University College, Cardiff.

A keen advocate of women’s right to vote, she held a meeting in the family home to which the leading suffragette Christabel Pankhurst was invited, and when she died in 1965, an obituary published in the Barry and District News said:

‘Members of the folklore and archaeological circle [of the 20th Century Club] remember with deep appreciation her unbounded enthusiasm for her subject and the many excursions of historical interest on which she led them. In the early 1930s Mrs Hughes organised and led a party of more than 60 members of the club on a continental tour to Geneva and Paris. Highlight of the trip was a reception given to the party at the headquarters of the League of Nations at Geneva … Mrs Jones possessed a disposition of charm and great friendliness, and hundreds of past pupils of the County School scattered now throughout the world can recall how ably she supported her husband in everything with his post. Former pupils visited her up to the end.’

Having two such remarkable parents gave Gareth Jones a tremendous advantage: an outlook that was fundamentally internationalist and open to ideas beyond the narrow provincialism and jingoism that was prevalent in early 20th Century Britain. He was taught at home by his mother until he was seven, at which point he began attending his father’s school. In 1922 he won a scholarship to study modern languages – French, German and Russian – at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, which both his parents as well as his elder sisters Gwyneth and Eirian had attended. He greatly enjoyed his time at Aberystwyth, studying hard but also enjoying the social side of student life, attending rugby matches with friends and playing golf. Coming from a family of devout Nonconformists, he attended the Welsh Tabernacle in the town regularly, often twice on Sundays. While at Aberystwyth he also met a young German lecturer called Reinhard Haferkorn, who was to become his closest friend and with whom he would later stay in Germany on a number of occasions.

From 1923, as part of his course, he spent two years at the University of Strasbourg and while studying in Alsace wrote a letter to his parents in which he set out what he wanted to do with his life:

‘I was very interested in Dada’s suggestions about a fellowship and perhaps a lectureship. But I’m sorry, it does not tempt me very much. I am much more interested in people and countries and in modern Europe especially. I would a thousand times prefer to use my knowledge of languages with an aim to obtaining a position where I could meet interesting people of all nationalities and where I could really find out the characteristics of the nations of today; why there are wars, and how they could be prevented; how national, Semitic and religious prejudices can be destroyed, and why they exist; why there are certain movements, literary or political in certain countries; why people of races have certain ideals; why certain nations have their characteristics reflected in their literature. All that – and especially learning all these things by travelling and trying to make people speak out their ideas and meet interesting men – interests me much more than study for study’s sake. I would much prefer a career which comprehends a knowledge of men.’

He went on to write that he was able to judge men much better than when he first came to Strasbourg – and he was able to observe their traits, national or political, much more thoroughly. Strasbourg, with students from all nations, had been an excellent experience for him in that respect. He added:

‘Also, I do not want to specialise in one language alone as I could have to do if I were a professor or something of the sort, and I would certainly not like to specialise in French, since I have very little in common with the French or with their literature. I am going to continue Russian. I find that in general I get on well with people and can usually accommodate myself to different milieus. I have succeeded quite well in getting their ideas out of the Alsatians, who usually keep their ideas to themselves.’

Listing the kind of jobs he could see himself doing, Jones wrote:

‘I would much prefer … something in the League of Nations, Foreign Office, Diplomacy (? this is too costly) or Consular Service. I want to travel, and I want to learn languages. I find the world much more interesting from the human point of view than I did two years ago.’

After graduating with a first class honours degree he continued his language studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, securing a double first in German and Russian. At Cambridge, as well as joining the Trinity Madrigals as a tenor, he became chief secretary of the Cambridge League of Nations, and to further his international understanding would on a weekly basis host a meeting at which a foreign student would be asked to give a talk on a matter relating to his home country. Gareth Jones’ interest in the League of Nations pre-dated his arrival at Cambridge. His father was a friend and supporter of David Davies, the Liberal MP for Montgomeryshire (1906-29) and benefactor, whose grandfather, also David Davies – ‘Davies the Ocean’ – had developed Barry docks.

He was, however, determined not to ally himself publicly with a particular political party. He had been asked by his father whether he would join the university’s Liberal Club – his father was an active member of the party. Jones responded: ‘I should prefer not to join, because I do not want to join any new clubs. I want to work only. Also, I should like to remain independent from a party, although I am a Liberal and would vote Liberal. I don’t want to feel bound down, especially.’

Jones also had a finely developed sense of humour, which he sometimes used to tease members of his family, especially his Aunt Winnie, who lived with his parents. On 11 February 1926 he wrote to her, stating: ‘A mysterious man, very handsome, the Count de X ... handed me the enclosed Valentine for you. I hope you will get it Saturday.’ On the opposite page of the letter he had drawn a picture of the Count with a check bow tie and moustache. A speech bubble reads: ‘Give this Valentine to ze bootiful Miss Winnie Jones.’

Responding to her after she had accused him of planning to ‘binge’, he wrote:

‘If I want to go to a ‘binge’, why shouldn’t I go on a binge? Are you going to stop me bingeing if I want to binge? Binge it all, could I refuse when Mary of all people invited me to the binge? After long months of absence, how could I but go? To see if she is still kind and gentle? All your efforts will not prevail, nothing will prevail to keep me from Radyr [a village on the north western outskirts of Cardiff]. Nay, were you to find me in chains, I would burst them asunder to go to Mary’s binge. I can see your cunning. You want me to marry Flo and want to detach me from Mary. Ah ha, your social ambition is carrying you away and you have your eyes on Flo because she is a Mayor’s daughter. Were she even a Colonel’s daughter I would not marry her.’

In fact, there is no evidence in his diaries or correspondence that Jones was interested in marrying anyone. His archive is devoid of romantic interest. His written work is, however, sprinkled with anecdotes about unusual people he met. One example from his Cambridge days relates to an exiled Russian he had befriended called Volkov.

Volkov invited him to tea so he could meet a German friend of his referred to as Freiherr (Baron) Von Trott – a wonderful name, according to Jones, who wrote:

‘I liked von Trott immensely, a charming boyish keen fellow … He is coming to Cambridge before long and is coming to have dinner with me. One thing pleased me. We started talking German and I was in great form. Von Trott said that it would be difficult to tell that I was a foreigner. He knows the Kaiser’s grandson who is a fine fellow. Von Trott dislikes the Kaiser and the Crown Prince as he is a big republican, but still says that the Crown Prince’s son is a quiet kind hearted gentleman of a boy. Von Trott belongs to the most famous corps [student’s club] in Germany, the one the Kaiser belonged to.’

Jones also met an unnamed Russian who had been an officer in the anti-Bolshevik White Army, writing:

‘His grandmother was a Tartar (in the real sense of the word!) a Kalmuk, and he was very proud of it. Force was the thing that counted in the nations. Every nation should live its own independent life and rely on nobody else. The Poles were hateful people. The Jews were to be expelled. The Finns were a secondary people and were traitors to Russia. He was a Great Russian and a strong nationalist.’

It turned out that the Russian had known the daughters of John Hughes, for whose family Jones’ mother had worked as a nanny in Ukraine. The Russian said: ‘Well I know the two daughters of Mrs Hughes very well. Princess Scherbatoff [a Russian aristocrat killed in the Revolution] was a great friend of mine. We all used to play cards together in the south of France.’

‘He was very astonished at the coincidence’, wrote Jones. ‘We had a great discussion. He had some weird views. He has invited me to go and see him and his wife on Tuesday night. He is writing a book on Russian Portrait Painters of the 18th and 19th centuries. He has a marvellous personality, excitable, would carry everything to extremes, full of life; very handsome, dark and wavy hair, very tall.’ He was, in fact, exactly the kind of person Jones enjoyed meeting and his correspondence shows him ready to embrace new experiences.

When the River Cam froze over in February 1929, Jones borrowed some skates. He hadn’t skated before and fell down ‘dozens of times’. Fellow students Billy Vane and Peter Lewis each took one of his hands and when they let go he ‘glided along perfectly’. The following day Jones proudly skated two miles to the village of Grantchester, where he met former Cambridge University MP, JRM Butler, who after losing his seat pursued a successful academic career. At this time he was a history lecturer. Butler told Jones the river had last frozen over in 1895, when his mother skated to Ely. Jones found skating a wonderful sensation, and it made him feel very fit. Unfortunately, when he got back to Cambridge his shoes had been stolen, but that didn’t stop him skating on future occasions, as often as possible.

One day Jones came back to his room to find his door open and a small, oldish man writing a letter at his table. The man turned out to be Sir Bernard Pares, who had an intriguing background. He told Jones he would introduce him to ‘all the right people’ and get him access to the Russian library. Pares was a former school teacher and Trinity College graduate, then in his 50s, who had inherited a lot of money from his extremely wealthy father. At the time he was teaching at the School of Slavonic Studies at King’s College, London. He had taken a great interest in political developments in Russia, first visiting the country in 1898, and as opposition to the monarchy increased, Pares established contact with liberal opponents of the Tsar.

Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart.

During the First World War, as revolutionary turmoil increased, Pares suggested to Robert Hamilton (R.H.) Bruce Lockhart, Britain’s Consul-General in Russia, that a propaganda unit should be set up with the aim of promoting Britain’s interests on the war’s eastern front. A secret War Propaganda Unit had already been established in Britain at the outset of the war on the suggestion of David Lloyd George, who was successively Chancellor of the Exchequer, Minister of Munitions, and Prime Minister from 1916. High profile writers were recruited to write pamphlets for the unit including Arthur Conan Doyle, Arnold Bennett, John Masefield, Ford Maddox Ford, GK Chesterton, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, GM Trevelyan and HG Wells.

An early pamphlet produced by the unit called Report on Alleged German Outrages suggested that the German army had systematically tortured Belgian civilians. Research carried out after the war concluded that while there were individual atrocities on both sides, the claim of systematic torture was inaccurate.

In January 1916, Lockhart set up a meeting with British journalists, including Arthur Ransome (best known as author of the children’s book Swallows and Amazons) and submitted a proposal to the British ambassador Sir George Buchanan. The project was approved and became known as the International News Agency (Anglo-Russian Bureau). Funded by the Foreign Office and headed by Hugh Walpole, it placed pro-British stories in Russian newspapers. As well as Ransome and Pares, other members included Hamilton Fyfe of the Daily News and Morgan Phillips Price of the Manchester Guardian.

Admiral Alexander Kolchak, circa 1919.

After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Pares left Russia, but forged links with Alexander Kolchak, who formed a counter-revolutionary force known as the White Army which was backed by Britain and whose aim was to overthrow the Bolshevik regime. The White Army met heavy resistance, being seen as a tool of the West and imposing repressive measures in the areas it conquered. Kolchak awarded himself dictatorial powers and introduced capital punishment for anyone who resisted his authority. In territory captured by the White Army, trade unions were suppressed, soviets were disbanded, and factories and land were returned to their previous owners.

Kolchak was accused of committing war crimes, with one report claiming that he had 25,000 people killed in Ekaterinburg, and although the White Army continued to advance, Kolchak’s acts of repression had resulted in the formation of the Western Siberian Peasants’ Red Army. The Red Army also made advances, entering Omsk in November 1919, and Kolchak fled eastwards with the promise of safe passage by the Czechoslovaks to the British military mission in Irkutsk. However, he was handed over to the Socialist Revolutionaries and appeared before a five-man commission between 21 January and 6 February, at the end of which he was sentenced to death. He was shot by firing squad on 7 February 1920.

Lockhart had been recalled to London just before the Russian Revolution but returned in January 1918 as Head of Special Mission to the Soviet Government with the rank of acting British Consul-General in Moscow. He also had the far more secretive role of co-ordinating the activities of British spies who had been sent to the country by Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the head of MI6. The main objective of this group was to bring about the overthrow of the Bolshevik government. In 1932 Lockhart published a book called Memoirs of a British Agent, and during the Second World War he was Director General of the Political Warfare Executive, the British government’s main instrument of propaganda.

What should we make of Sir Bernard Pares’ offer to introduce Jones to ‘all the right people’? Was his interest in the talented undergraduate purely philanthropic, or – given his connection with the world of espionage – did he see the linguistically gifted and politically inquisitive undergraduate as someone who could be an information gatherer to help the authorities understand better how people in crucial countries were thinking?

In addition to his native Welsh and English, Jones was highly competent in French and a fluent speaker of both German and Russian – the two countries of strategic importance where vast change was under way. A high proportion of ‘spying’ or intelligence gathering is simply acquiring information. It doesn’t have to involve the leak of highly sensitive secrets. Having, in this case, someone with the right observational and reporting skills visiting the countries concerned with a credible reason for doing so would be a godsend for the British government at a time when another war could not be ruled out.

There is no direct evidence that Gareth Jones was a ‘spy’ in any sense of the term, but his subsequent travels and interviews with ‘the right people’ were undoubtedly productive from an information gathering view – and it would be strange if the British government hadn’t taken an interest in his findings. Such an additional, unacknowledged role would in no way detract from the value of what he was doing anyway.

It’s worth noting that not many years later the so-called Cambridge Five spy ring including Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and John Cairncross had all been recruited at Trinity College, Cambridge, apart from Donald Maclean at nearby Trinity Hall. They, unlike Jones, however, had all been Marxists and supporters of Soviet Communism.

Gareth Jones received excellent references from two academics. One from Dr HF (Hugh) Stewart, a Fellow of Trinity College, said he was ‘one of the most competent and satisfactory pupils that have passed through my hands.’ Dr Stewart added: ‘With nimbleness of mind and rapidity, he reached a high first class standard in every language he studied. His grasp of history and principles of literature is remarkable. He has a clever head and a retentive memory and I have no doubt that whichever way he turns his intellectual attention he will succeed and reach a commanding position.’

Professor Karl Breul, of King’s College, Cambridge, wrote: ‘Apart from his proficiency in German, he speaks French and Russian, and besides his travels in German-speaking countries, he has visited France, Switzerland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Latvia and the Scandinavian countries and made a study of the conditions and characteristic features of these countries. I am convinced that either as Foreign Correspondent to a leading newspaper or as a member of the Consular Service, or working on the staff of the League of Nations, Mr Jones would be sure to do most valuable work, and I strongly recommend him for any post of this or a similar nature.’

Jones decided to apply to the Foreign Office, with a clear preference to join the Consular Service. When he secured an interview, he wrote to his family with exuberance about travelling to it from Cambridge:

‘The drive to London was ripping early yesterday morning. Straus [a friend who was a Harvard man in Trinity, whose father was a prominent businessman in New York] travelled at a tremendous speed – a wonderful car, and we passed all the cars on the road. We got to London in very quick time and were in good time for the interview. Straus drove us right to the building; down Bond St and then turned to the left. Straus told me to meet him outside the Ritz, Piccadilly at 7 o’clock and I left them to go into the very impressive building – the Civil Service Commission headquarters.

‘Just outside, I met [Jasper] Lehmann, a remarkably nice Etonian at Trinity – 2nd year –