Captain Sigismund Payne Best OBE was a British Secret Intelligence Service agent during the First and Second World Wars. He was captured by German Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) men on 9 November 1939 in the Venlo Incident.
Captain Sigismund Payne Best, with monocle (1939)
Nieuwe Uitleg: the street in The Hague where Best had his office in 1939
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6, is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligence on foreign nationals in support of its Five Eyes partners. SIS is one of the British intelligence agencies and the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service ("C") is directly accountable to the Foreign Secretary.
SIS Building, the headquarters of MI6 in London
54 Broadway, SIS headquarters from 1924 until 1964
A young Englishman, member of the Secret Intelligence Service, in Yatung, Tibet, photographed by Ernst Schäfer in 1939
Operation Gold: the Berlin tunnel in 1956