Eric Earnshaw-Smith

Eric Earnshaw-Smith was born in Cambridge on 22 May 1893, the second son of Alfred Earnshaw- Smith, a bookseller and publisher. He was educated at Perse School and went to Oxford University as a Classics scholar in 1912 but did not complete his degree. He enthusiastically contributed original poems and translations of Rimbaud to ‘Oxford Poetry’ in 1915, 1916 and 1917 (other contributors include Aldous Huxley, Dorothy Sayers, Robert Graves and JRR Tolkien). He was commissioned in the 4th Ox and Bucks Light Infantry in July 1915. He was badly wounded in the ​abdomen in July 1916 and was returned to the UK where he had a kidney removed. He was attached to the War Trade Intelligence Department from May 1917 to March 1919. He resigned his commission on account of ill health caused by the wounds he received in April 1918. ​

He joined MI1b in June 1919 and worked on Greece. He was appointed a Junior Assistant in GC&CS when it was founded, and was promoted to Senior Assistant in the early 1930s. By the start of WWII he was Head of the Diplomatic Section at Bletchley Park, and when this was ​removed to Berkeley St in London in February 1942, he became Assistant Director Civil, AD(C), the second in command of the Diplomatic and Commercial Section. His post was retitled to Head of Diplomatic Research and he continued in it until August 1945, when he was posted as Head of the Greek Subsection.

He was married to Eirene Botting, better known as the writer Antonia White, from 1924 to 1929. He died in 1972. ​