Charles Arnold-Baker

Charles Arnold-Baker, OBE (born Wolfgang Charles Werner von Blumenthal; 25 June 1918 – 6 June 2009) was an English member of MI6, barrister (called 1948) and historian. He was the author of the Companion to British History. He was awarded an OBE and the King Haakon VII Medal of Freedom (1945).

Background

Charles Arnold-Baker was the son of Professor Baron Albrecht Werner von Blumenthal (10 August 1889, Staffelde, by Stettin, Prussia – 28 March 1945, Marburg an der Lahn), of Gross Schloenwitz by Stolp, Pomerania, by his first wife, an English lady, Wilhelmine, née Hainsworth (1883–1978), and stepson of Percival Richard Arnold-Baker. His parents divorced in 1921; his mother returned to England and was remarried, in 1923, to Percy Arnold-Baker, (1875–1944), brother of Sir Frederick Arnold-Baker.) He was born in the Charité Hospital, Berlin, of which his ancestor Johann Christian Theden had been Surgeon-General, in 1918 and died in 2009, having been received into the Roman Catholic Church on his deathbed. His ashes were interred, however, in the triforium of the Temple Church, London.

Wolfgang Charles Werner was educated at Winchester College and Magdalen College, Oxford (BA History 1940).

He also arrested senior German military figures (King Haakon VII's Medal of Freedom). He took the view that as the war was now practically over, it was important to gather as much intelligence about the Soviet army, since this was plainly the new threat. In this he was thwarted, and his reports concerning his interrogations of such figures as a high civilian official in the German administration of occupied Russia, von der Ow, who described the anti-communist feelings of much of the population of the western USSR, were buried by his superiors who were, as it later emerged, Soviet spies.

Publications Everyman's Dictionary of Dates, London, 1954. Parish Administration. London, 1958. New Law and Practice of Parish Administration, London, 1966. The 5000 and the Power Tangle, London, 1967. The Local Government Act, London, 1972 & 1973. Local Council Administration, London, 1975 (13th edition 2022). The Local Government Planning & Land Act 1980, London, 1981. Practical Law for Arts Administrators, London, 1983 (3rd edition 1992). Genealogisches Handbuch des Adeligen Hauser, A Band XVIII, Limburg an der Lahn, 1985 edition, page 19. The 5000 and the Living Constitution, London, 1986. Arnold-Baker, Professor CharlesMonarchy, published by the International Monarchist League, London, 1991, (P/B). The Companion to British History, London, (1st edition 1996, Longcross Press), 2nd edition, 2001, Routledge; Third Edition by Loncross Denholm Press November 2008, von Blumenthal, Wolfgang, For he is an Englishman – Memoirs of a Prussian Nobleman, London, 2007, Jeremy Mills Publishing,