My Father’s Son

Ric Throssell was the son of novelist Katharine Susannah Prichard, and Gallipoli Victoria Cross winner Hugo Throssell. He was born in Greenmount, Western Australia and educated at Perth’s Wesley College, and then attended Clermont Teachers’ College, where he also enrolled in classes at the University of Western Australia. During World War II, he enlisted in the Australian Army, and served for a period in New Guinea. In 1943 he joined the Department of External Affairs, and was subsequently posted to Moscow (1945-1946) and Rio de JaneiroAustralian diplomat Ric Throssell, who died in 1999 protesting his innocence, is also named extensively in MI5 files as a suspected spy who worked with a Russian spy in its embassy in Canberra named as Filipp Kislitsyn who was a KGB agent in Canberra who had assisted in the fleeing to Moscow of British diplomats and leaders of the notorious Cambridge 5 spy ring Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean. It does note while he was a suspect, ASIO had been unable to obtain “sufficient evidence” other than claims by Petrov that he “was a source of great value to the Russian Intelligence Service until about 1951 when he took fright and refused to continue to work for them”. That fright apparently came after Milner’s interrogation by MI5, documents claim, and to British intelligence the claims against Throssell were “the most disturbing” because of access and friendship he and his wife (also a suspected spy) had to among others noted British diplomat Sir Neville Butler.pp. 414 #1117 First Edition