Jenifer Hart

Jenifer Hart (; 31 January 1914

Biography Jenifer Fischer Williams was the third of the five daughters of (Eleanor) Marjorie Hay (née Murray, 1880–1961), a descendant of John Murray, third Duke of Atholl, and Sir John Fischer Williams (1870-1947), an eminent international law specialist. Her father worked for a time in France, where Hart received her early education at the Lycée Molière and Cours Fénelon in Paris. She became private secretary to the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office, Sir Alexander Maxwell.

Spying allegations Although Hart admitted to having had a meeting with spymaster Arnold Deutsch early in her career, she claimed not to have been recruited or passed any confidential information to him or to other Communist Party members. In 1983, an edition of the BBC's Timewatch programme revealed that she had been interviewed in the 1960s by Peter Wright and others about her political activities, and this led to controversy since her husband was himself a former intelligence officer.

Herbert Hart admitted having little interest in sex, and suspected that Jenifer had affairs with Sir Isaiah Berlin and other men.

With her younger sister, Mariella, Hart inherited her parents' home, Lamledra, in Cornwall, to which her parents had retired.

On 19 March 2005, Hart died of heart failure at Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. She was 91.

Works The British Police (1951) Proportional Representation: critics of the British electoral system 1820–1945 (1992) Ask Me No More: An Autobiography (1998)