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The Ace of Spies and Other Significant Espionage Figures

Khalid Elhassan December 20, 2019 33 min

Detective - Mystery — Throughout history, spies have aroused mixed feelings of fear, loathing, and admiration. Mixed Matches

38. The Master of Disguise

The Dutch-descended Boers gave the British plenty of headaches during the Boer War. Encyclopedia Britannica

In 1899, Sidney Reilly was given a permanent position with British Naval Intelligence Department (NID). One of his earliest assignments occurred during the Boer War, when Reilly was sent to Holland to gather information about arms shipments being sent to the Boers in South Africa.

Cool-headed, creative, brave, and a natural at disguises with acting chops that allowed him to do just about any persona, Reilly used his talents to present himself as a Russian arms dealer. That got him invited to inspect various Dutch arms factories, and he returned to Britain with valuable information that impressed his superiors. Between that and other early successes, Reilly soon earned a reputation as one of the NID’s top agents.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.