Exposed: the man who sucked the blood of MI6

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April 01, 2005

TIMJES
By Michael Evans
Our correspondent examines secret service files released by the National Archive



AN UNDERCOVER agent working for the secret service a hundred years ago was a bloodsucker in more ways than one: he blackmailed his employers into paying him a pension for life, and he became the model for Bram Stoker’s vampire-hunter in his novel Dracula.

Arminius Vambéry, a Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Budapest from 1865 to 1905, was so widely travelled and well connected that his dispatches to his secret service masters back in London were read by members of the Cabinet, and he was even known at Buckingham Palace.

On a visit to London in 1890, during dinner at the Beefsteak Club, he introduced Bram Stoker to the Dracula legend. The author was so impressed that, it is believed, he used Vambéry as the model for Abraham van Helsing, his vampire-hunter.

However, according to secret service files released yesterday by the National Archives at Kew, the man who used to regale people with tales of bloodsucking fiends from Transylvania was more concerned with making money and being lionised in society than looking after Britain’s interests.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-1549707,00.html
GENUINE Times news item or April Fool spoof?????