A FORMER civil servant of five decades who worked with MI6 in the former West Germany has died aged 85.

Terence Glynn, of Bicester, joined the Ministry of Defence (MoD) aged just 15 and stayed with the government department until he retired at 65.

He spent time working overseas, notably in West Germany during the Cold War, from 1969 to 1972.

There he provided assistance to agents of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), most of whom he knew as “Mr Smith”.

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And on one occasion he was involved in smuggling a deceased body in a white coffin across the border into Holland.

For the most part he spent his career working at MoD premises in Bicester, and was an active trade unionist.

He was partly responsible for negotiating fairer working conditions for his colleagues as well as writing for the civil service magazine Red Tape, established by his brother and fellow civil servant, Patrick.

His son-in-law Dan Derry said: “Terence was a man of great intellect and compassion and inspired all he knew.

“His influence was so great that two of his grandchildren now work in the Civil Service and his belief that dedicating your life to the betterment of something greater than yourself is an achievement to which all should aspire.”

Terence Glynn was born in Forest Gate, East London, on November 9, 1929, to parents Patrick and Rose.

His father was a sub-editor on a London evening newspaper and a press manager of the European Motion Picture Co.

Mr Glynn Jnr grew up in Forest Hill with his siblings Thomas and Patrick (now deceased).

He and his family left for Shropshire during the Second World War, where they then settled.

His views were in part shaped by his very early experiences as a child in the East End’s Earlham Grove, seeing weekly disturbances between the fascists and the communists who would do battle on their street – occupied at the time by a combined Jewish and Christian community.

At 15 he left school and became a clerk with the Ministry of Defence.

It was a career he would stay with his whole life, eventually resulting in an offer of an OBE for his long service, which Mr Glynn, who lived in Bicester, politely declined.

He had also worked as a freelance journalist.

Mr Glynn met his future wife, Rachel, nee Manning, at the Top Hat Club in Dublin.

They wed on December 24, 1955, at the Church of our Lady of the Rosary, Donnington, Telford, Shropshire.

The couple’s first child, Paul, was born in 1958, followed by Lynnette in 1962. Mr Gylnn and his family moved to Bicester in 1972.

A keen traveller and painter, many of his works adorned the walls of family members’ homes.

Terence Glynn died on November 12 after a long period of illness.

A funeral was held at Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, in Headington, on November 15 and was followed by an internment at Oxford Crematorium.

Mr Glynn is survived by his wife, his two children and three grandchildren, Daniel, Tristan and Liam.

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