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Anna Nikolayevna Wolkova (; 17 April 1902 – 2 August 1973), sometimes known as Anna de Wolkoff, was a White Russian émigrée and convicted spy. She was secretary of The Right Club, which was opposed to Britain's involvement in World War II. Her arrest for spying for Germany interrupted plans for a fascist coup by the Right Club.
Anna and her father held right-wing, anti-Semitic views and were considered sympathizers of Nazi Germany, which she visited several times in the 1930s. She later claimed to have met Hans Frank and Rudolf Hess.
Her visits caused MI5 to take an interest in her activities and from 1935, she was placed under surveillance as a possible German spy. Wallis Simpson was a client of her couture business and also was under surveillance by British counterintelligence.
Other members included William Joyce (briefly), who then defected to Germany as a broadcaster, A. K. Chesterton, later the author of The New Unhappy Lords, Francis Yeats-Brown, best-selling author of Bengal Lancer, Admiral Wilmot Nicholson and his wife Christabel, and the Duke of Wellington.Christabel Nicholson also was tried on pro-German conspiracy charges but acquitted on all counts. Still, she was then locked up in Holloway Prison under Regulation 18B, where she remained for four years. Ramsay, p. 78. The club's members often held their meetings in the Russian Tea Rooms.Joyce joined the Right Club on 1 July 1939 but the following month, he departed for Germany. http://www.statesecrets.co.uk/who/index-j.html#Joyce-W Chesterton, A. K., The New Unhappy Lords, London, July 1965, reprinted in 1979 in US, Library of Congress Card no.67-24083Griffiths, p. 355. In his autobiography, The Nameless War, Ramsay argued: "The main object of the Right Club was to oppose and expose the activities of Organised Jewry, in the light of the evidence which came into my possession in 1938. Our first objective was to clear the Conservative Party of Jewish influence and the character of our membership and meetings were strictly in keeping with this objective".Ramsay, Archibald Henry Maule. The Nameless War. A History of the Events leading up to the Second World War, 1952, ASIN B0017GYOE4; paperback: Augustine Publishing, 1969,
In February 1940, Wolkoff met Tyler Kent, a cipher clerk from the US embassy with similar views, who became a regular visitor to the Right Club. Kent later revealed to Wolkoff and Ramsay some of the documents that he had stolen from the embassy and was holding in his flat, notably on sensitive communications between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.Griffiths, p. 370 On 13 April 1940, Wolkoff went to Kent's flat to borrow some of the documents to have them photographed, as it emerged later. Her espionage work took a downturn when she then approached De Muncke and asked her if she could pass a coded letter to William Joyce through her Italian embassy contacts.Griffiths, p. 370. De Muncke agreed and then showed the letter to Knight.
Wolkoff's arrested interrupted Ramsay's plans for a fascist coup, that would've taken place had German troops landed on British soil. In anticipation for the coup, Ramsay infiltrated Right Club informants into the police, MI5, the Minister of Economic Warfare, the Air Ministry censorship branch, Churchill's war cabinet, and inside the top-secret codebreaking facility, then working on the Enigma machine decryption.
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