Catalogue description Edith TUDOR-HART, alias SUSCHITSKY, WHITE, Betty GREY, codename EDITH: Austrian,...

Edith TUDOR-HART, alias SUSCHITSKY, WHITE, Betty GREY, codename EDITH: Austrian, naturalised British. TUDOR-HART was a communist who first came to the UK around 1925. Excluded in 1931 on account of her political activities, she married in Vienna Alexander TUDOR-HART, an English doctor who was also a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and a fellow Russian Intelligence Service (RIS) recruit. The couple returned to London but separated. Edith set herself up as a professional photographer. Having joined the CPGB in 1927 she remained associated with it for the rest of her life, sometimes using an alias to disguise her membership. In 1947 TUDOR-HART told a reliable source that she had worked for the RIS in Austria and Italy in 1932-33, running a photographic studio as cover. A personal friend of Litzi FRIEDMANN, PHILBY's first wife, it was almost certainly she who first talent-spotted PHILBY to the RIS in Vienna in 1933. In 1938 receipts for a Leica camera used by the Percy GLADING group to photograph documents stolen from Woolwich Arsenal were made out to TUDOR-HART. In 1938-39 she was used by BURGESS and others as a courier to make contact with the RIS in Paris