Kenneth Carter Benton, CMG (4 March 1909 – 14 October 1999) was an English MI6 officer and diplomat from 1937–68. Following retirement, Benton began a second career as writer of spy and crime thrillers. Early life and education Benton attended Wolverhampton School, and was first employed teaching French in an English prep school, then teaching English in Florence and Vienna. During this time, he earned a degree in French, German and Italian as an external student at London University. 1937–41: Recruitment to MI6 and first postings In 1937, in Vienna, Benton was offered a job by Captain Thomas Kendrick, the British Passport Control Officer for Vienna, who he had met initially through his future wife, Peggie Lambert. He was subsequently interviewed by Maurice Jeffes and Admiral Hugh Sinclair, then chief of MI6. Benton quickly realised that his role in the Passport Control Office was in fact a cover for intelligence work for MI6. "I had expected to begin dealing with visas, but instead was brought in to one of the back rooms where Bill Holmes passed me a letter addressed to somebody with a Czech name in some street in Vienna and asked me to translate it. I opened the letter, called Bill, and said, 'Look, I can't do this; it is in Czech.' She said, 'Oh, I'm sorry; how stupid; hang on for a moment.' At the back of my desk there was a little open bottle of colourless liquid, with a brush, and she dipped the brush in the liquid, passed it over the whole of the front of the letter and to my amazed eyes red writing appeared at right angles to the Czech text and it was in German. Then she turned the letter over and did the same on the rear side, so that I had two sides of what was in fact a German report." After the Annexation of Austria in 1938, Kenneth and Peggie (married in March of that year) were posted to Riga, he as acting vice consul; after the Soviet occupation of Latvia two years later, he returned to England and after briefing at Bletchley Park was subsequently posted to Madrid as head of MI6's Section V, dealing with intercepted intelligence traffic and identifying German spies travelling through Spain. 1941–43: Madrid Benton reported technically to Hamilton Stokes, Head of the Madrid SIS Station, but because of the confidential nature of his