Christopher Curwen

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Career

Curwen was educated at Sherborne School and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge after which he was commissioned into the 4th Queen's Own Hussars in 1948, serving in Malaya.<ref>Burke's Peerage and Gentry</ref><ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref> He joined SIS in 1952 and was posted to Thailand in 1954 and Vientiane, Laos in 1956.<ref name=":0" /> He returned to the service's London headquarters in 1958, had another spell in Bangkok from 1961 and then two years in Kuala Lumpur. He was at one time married to a woman from Burma;<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> they were later divorced.<ref name=":1" />

Curwen spent three years as SIS liaison officer in Washington D.C. from 1968 and was then head of station in Geneva.<ref>MI6 - 50 years of Special Operations, by Stephen Dorril, Page 753, Harper Collins, 2001, Template:ISBN</ref> He was deputy to Sir Colin Figures from 1980 and succeeded him as Chief of the Service in 1985.<ref>Cloaked Dagger</ref> His tenure was notable for the successful exfiltration from Moscow of the KGB officer and British agent Oleg Gordievsky.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=":0" />

His obituary in The Times noted: "He possessed a romantic patriotism that belied his hard-headed persona."<ref name=":0" />