Anna Wolkoff

Anna Nikolayevna Wolkova (1902-1973) was a White Russian émigré, and secretary of The Right Club, which was opposed to Britain's involvement in World War II.

When Britain went to war against Germany in September 1939, the Right Club officially disbanded. However, some members continued their antiwar activities. Wolkoff, using an intermediary from the Italian embassy, sent information to Berlin, including suggestions for Joyce's propaganda broadcasts.

However, unbeknownst to Wolkoff, the Right Club had been infiltrated early on by MI5, first by Marjorie Mackie and then by young Belgian mystic Helene De Muncke as well as by Joan Miller, a young undercover agent who had worked as an office girl for Elizabeth Arden. Through those three women, controlled by head of MI5 Section B(5)b Maxwell Knight, MI5 was kept fully informed of and was able even to influence the activities of the group.

In February 1940, Wolkoff met Tyler Kent, a cipher clerk from the US embassy with similar views, and he became a regular visitor to the Right Club. Kent later revealed to Wolkoff and Ramsay some of the documents that he was holding in his flat that he had stolen from the embassy, most notably on sensitive communications between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. On April 13, 1940, Wolkoff went to Kent's flat to borrow some of the documents to have them photographed, as it emerged later. Her espionage work took a downturn when she then approached De Muncke and asked her if she could pass a coded letter to William Joyce through her Italian embassy contacts. De Muncke agreed and then showed the letter to her controller, Knight.

Wolkoff and Kent were arrested on May 20, 1940 and charged with violating the Official Secrets Act. As she was put into the police car, her arrest was witnessed by 11-year-old Len Deighton. She was tried in camera at the Old Bailey, with Sir William Jowitt as prosecutor. On November 7, 1940, Wolkoff was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for "attempting to assist the enemy", and Kent, an American citizen, was sentenced to 7 years.

After her conviction, the Certificates of Naturalisation (Revocation) Committee was contacted, and her citizenship was revoked on August 13, 1943.

She was released from prison in 1947 and worked as a seamstress, lodging in the house of society figure Felix Hope-Nicholson. She was killed in a road accident in Spain in 1973 in a car ironically driven by a former member of the Right Club.

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