Earl of Oxford and Asquith

British hereditary peer and former SIS officer; Moscow head of station during the 1985 exfiltration of Oleg Gordievsky

The Earl of Oxford and Asquith (Raymond Asquith, 3rd Earl of Oxford and Asquith) is a hereditary British peer in the House of Lords. He was elected to the Lords in 2014 as a Liberal Democrat, and by 2025 he sat as a crossbencher. In a 2025 interview with the Daily Telegraph he described his career in the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, or MI6). The paper reported that he was the SIS head of station in Moscow who smuggled the KGB officer and British double agent Oleg Gordievsky out of the Soviet Union in 1985.

He is also a former British diplomat, a career which saw him hold posts in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Cabinet Office. He succeeded to the peerage after the passing of his father, Julian Asquith, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Asquith on 16 January 2011.

Early life and family

According to the Telegraph, Asquith was born in Libya. He was one of the five children of Julian "Trim" Asquith, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Asquith, a grandson of the Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith, and his wife Anne Palairet, who had worked at Bletchley Park. His father served in the colonial service, with postings in Zanzibar, the West Indies and the Seychelles. From the age of nine Asquith was at school in England, spending the holidays on the Mells estate in Somerset with his grandmother, Katharine Asquith (née Horner), and his aunt, Lady Helen Asquith. His grandfather, Raymond Asquith, was killed at the Somme in 1916, and his great-uncle Edward Horner was killed at Cambrai in 1917. He was educated at Ampleforth and Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in the early 1970s.

In 1978 he married Clare Pollen, who became a Shakespearean scholar. His son, Mark, Viscount Asquith, is heir to the Mells estate, and he has four daughters.

Recruitment into SIS

After marrying, Asquith applied to the Foreign Office, but Margaret Thatcher's civil service recruitment freeze meant that "they couldn't take me". A year later, he told the Telegraph, "A guy from the Foreign Office said, 'we would have liked to have had you – but you can join our friends, the SIS'". He went for an interview: "I hadn't volunteered for it. I actually intended to join the Foreign Office!" He took the job because he needed one. "My father was disappointed. He said, 'you'll never be an ambassador and you'll always have to tell lies'."

Moscow

After the SIS induction course, Asquith, then Viscount Asquith, asked to be posted to Moscow. "They said, 'nothing ever happens in Moscow'. Sure enough, it didn't in those days, because the KGB was so efficient." He told the Telegraph that the family were under constant KGB surveillance. He and his wife communicated by writing notes and putting them down the lavatory. Their flat was searched daily, either by their Russian nanny or by KGB agents she let in. Once, when the couple disagreed about where they had planned to go for a picnic, he asked the ceiling "Well, where did we agree?", and a note with the answer came under the door. Another time, while cross-country skiing, he crashed into a tree in which a KGB photographer was hiding.

According to the Telegraph, he was the SIS Moscow head of station who smuggled Oleg Gordievsky out of the Soviet Union in the boot of a car in 1985. In his own account to the paper: "I'm very glad we pulled it off. The Foreign Office only gave us a 20pc chance of success." If Gordievsky had been caught, he said, "they would have shot him", and a lorry would have been arranged to crash into the Asquiths' car. "After the event, a KGB officer told me [that] would have happened to me."

He left SIS in 1997. "People say you never retire, but that's nonsense. I took the decision that when I left SIS I would leave it."

Later career and Mells

Asquith has business interests and a flat in Ukraine. He took charge of the 2,000-acre Mells Manor estate in Somerset when his father died in 2011. It had belonged to his grandmother's family, the Horners, since 1543. He has rebuilt the estate team, bought two farms and planted a vineyard. He runs two businesses, which his daughters will own between them.

Cryptome listing

The anonymous list of alleged MI6 officers published by Cryptome on 13 May 1999 includes the entry "Raymond Benedict Barthol Asquith: 83 Moscow, 92 Kiev; dob 1952; Viscount." The Moscow posting matches his own account to the Telegraph. See Cryptome MI6 lists.

Affiliations

• All Party Parliamentary Group on Nuclear Energy