Sir Roger Henry Hollis (2 December 1905 – 26 October 1973) was a British intelligence officer who served with MI5 from 1938 to 1965. He was Director General of MI5 from 1956 to 1965. Some commentators, including the journalist Chapman Pincher and intelligence officer Peter Wright, suggested that Hollis was a Soviet agent. In his book The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5 (2009), the Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew rejects this theory. The government's official position, first stated by Margaret Thatcher, is that there was no evidence that Hollis was a traitor. Early years, family, and education Hollis' father, the Right Reverend George Hollis, was Bishop of Taunton. His mother was a daughter of a Canon of Wells Cathedral. Hollis was educated at Clifton College, Bristol. From 1924 to the spring of 1926, he attended Worcester College, Oxford, where he read English, but left without completing his degree. At Oxford he was part of the Hypocrites' Club. Professional career From the spring of 1926 into 1927, he was a clerk for the Standard Chartered Bank in London. In early 1927, he went to Hong Kong as a freelance journalist, then moved to Shanghai. From 1 April 1928, he worked for British American Tobacco. In 1930, he transferred to Beijing. In June 1938, he joined MI5 F Division (Countersubversion). Many departments of MI5, including F Division, moved from London to Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, during World War II, due to threat of bombing. From 1953–56, Hollis was MI5 Deputy Director General under Dick White, succeeding White in 1956 and remaining in that post until his retirement in 1965. Mole suspicions After Kim Philby's flight from Beirut to Moscow in 1963, rumours began to circulate that Hollis had alerted him to his impending arrest. Hollis was criticised for not alerting John Profumo, the War Secretary in Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, that he might have become entangled with a Soviet spy ring through his friendship with Stephen Ward and his affair with showgirl Christine Keeler, who was introduced by Ward to Profumo. Soviet Naval Attache Eugene Ivanov was also involved with Keeler at this time, in the early 1960s, and sought to learn the date of American plans to arm nuclear warheads in West Germany, from Profumo through Keeler. Profumo had to resign in mid-1963, and the resulting scandal did much to bring the Labour Party to power in