His fellow student, historian Andrew Roberts, remembers Tomlinson as "a bright and charming undergraduate, popular with the boys for his drinking and sporting prowess, and with the girls for his dark good looks." [14] His friends included Gideon Rachman, who wrote him a reference after his tutor refused to do so. [15] Tomlinson completed flying training with Cambridge University Air Squadron and won a Half Blue for Modern Pentathlon. He graduated from the University of Cambridge with a starred First Class honours degree in aeronautical engineering in 1984, and was approached by MI6 shortly afterwards, whose offer he turned down. [10] Following his graduation he took examinations to join the Royal Navy as a Fleet Air Arm Officer, but he failed the medical examination due to childhood asthma. [11] Instead he applied for and was awarded a Kennedy Scholarship, which allowed him to study technology policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with full funding during 1986–7. [11] Following this, he was awarded a prize from the Rotary Foundation, allowing him to study in the country of his choice for a year. Consequently, he enrolled in a political science course at the University of Buenos Aires, where he became a fluent Spanish speaker. [11] He continued to pursue his aeronautical interests and qualified as a glider pilot with the Fuerza Aérea Argentina. During 1988–9, Tomlinson worked in Mayfair, London, for management consultancy company Booz Allen Hamilton. [11] Military and MI6 service [ edit ] MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, London Jimmy Burns, reviewing the book for the Financial Times, speculated that it was plausible that "MI6's senior management realised they had made a terrible mistake in recruiting someone who thought that espionage was just one big adventure." [36] He concluded, however, that the book "left me with the feeling that the spooks in Whitehall could have avoided a great deal of adverse publicity by agreeing to Tomlinson's original proposal: an employment tribunal held in camera." [36] a b Andrew Alderson "Stevens faces grilling over Diana's driver", telegraph.co.uk, 10 February 2008 He said Mr Tomlinson had tried to get MI6 to meet him and negotiate but it refused. 'I hope this case leads to improvements in the accountability of the secret services and better rights for their employees,' said Mr Wadham. 'We need to ensure that such sad circumstances do not occur ever again in the future.' Renegade former MI5 agent David Shayler told Channel 4 News: 'I think the government's running a great deal of risk because they have in some ways persecuted Richard Tomlinson.'

Further evidence discrediting Tomlinson's claims was found in drafts of a book he was writing about his time in MI6 before he was jailed in 1998 for breaching the Official Secrets Act. The draft, dating from 1996, referred to the memo and contained none of the detail about a staged car crash with flashlights in a tunnel. [38] Mr Tomlinson's lawyer Madame Levey also declined to comment about what her client discussed with the judge. They say they have found no evidence to support claims that Diana and Dodi Fayed were the victims of an assassination conspiracy. The three-month operation of the Truefax news agency resulted in not a single military secret being obtained and it was closed down, according to extracts from Tomlinson's book, The Big Breach, published in Russia yesterday.

Richard Tomlinson

Norton-Taylor, Richard (29 June 2006). "Police raid Riviera home of former MI6 officer". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 February 2021 . Retrieved 3 December 2012. More revealing was the statement given by Diana's eldest sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, who testified that in a phone conversation with Diana on Friday 29 August, Diana spoke about Dodi Fayed in a manner that gave her sister the impression the relationship was on "stony ground". [53] Statements from other friends and confidantes Diana spoke to in the week before her death, including her butler Paul Burrell, her friend Lady Annabel Goldsmith, and her spiritual adviser Rita Rogers, were unanimous that she was firm about not wanting to get engaged or married to anyone at that point in her life. A week before she died, the princess had told Goldsmith: "I need marriage like a rash on my face." [54] Mr Tomlinson, 35, fled to Paris last year after serving a six-month jail sentence for breaching the official secrets act. Intelligence agent accused of trying to publish book about service". Agence France-Presse. 3 November 1997.

a b "Spying scandal spreads". BBC News. 20 December 1999. Archived from the original on 19 April 2003 . Retrieved 5 December 2012. Donnelly, Rachel (4 November 1997). "Ex-MI6 agent charged over planned memoirs" . http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/1997/1104/97110400071.html. Mandela rages at Tomlinson's claim of MI6 link". The Guardian. 27 January 2001 . Retrieved 3 December 2012. Tom joined LPP in July 2016 from the Maple Financial Group, where he spent almost 20 years building his skills in different parts of the business including Operations and Finance. From 2008, he was the Chief Risk Officer (Market Risk), Global, a role that saw him drive the management and communication of Maple’s businessA few hours before the crash, on the afternoon of 30 August, Diana's journalist friend Richard Kay received a call on his mobile phone from Diana in which she asked about what was likely to appear in the following day's Sunday papers about her. [51] During this call, she made no mention of any announcement she intended to make. [52] He was arrested alongside ex-MI5 agent David Shayler, who is facing charges under the Official Secrets Act. Rachman, Gideon (18 February 2008). "My friend, the renegade spy". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 10 February 2021 . Retrieved 4 December 2012. a b c "Breach birth". The Economist. 25 January 2001. Archived from the original on 10 February 2021 . Retrieved 18 February 2013. Report: Princess Diana Death Probe: British Media Reports Allegation That Royal's Death Was No Accident", ABC News, 19 August 2013

After failing to publish The Big Breach on Monday as promised, Tomlinson's Moscow publisher, Sergei Korovin, yesterday told The Guardian the book, the subject of a High Court injunction obtained by MI6 against the Sunday Times last Friday, would definitely be launched this week, perhaps today. Radnofsky, Louise (20 February 2008). "MI6 did not assassinate Diana, ex-chief tells inquest". The Guardian . Retrieved 25 April 2020.

At the Coroner's Inquest into the death of the Princess, on 13 February 2008, speaking by video-link from France, Tomlinson conceded that, after the interval of 16 or 17 years, he "could not remember specifically" whether the document he had seen during 1992 had in fact proposed the use of a strobe light to cause a traffic accident as a means of assassinating Milošević, although use of lights for this purpose had been covered in his MI6 training. [48] On being told that no MI6 file on Henri Paul had been found, Tomlinson said that it "would be absurd after 17 years to say I can positively disagree with it, but... I do not think the fact that they did not manage to find a file rules out anything either". [48] He said he believed MI6 had an informant at the Paris Ritz but he could not be certain that this person was necessarily Henri Paul. [48] Post-MI6 [ ] In New Zealand, he was prevented from boarding a plane to Australia because of fears he was intending to reveal secrets. Tomlinson then attempted to assist Mohamed al-Fayed in his privately funded investigation into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and al-Fayed's son Dodi. Tomlinson claimed that MI6 had considered assassinating Slobodan Milošević, the president of Serbia, by staging a car crash using a powerful strobe light to blind the driver. He suggested that Diana and Dodi might have been killed by MI6 in the same way. Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 at the time, admitted that plans of that nature had been drafted regarding a different Eastern European official, but that the proposal had been swiftly rejected by management. [6] Argos and the Argolid: From the End of the Bronze Age to the Roman Occupation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1972) ISBN 0801407133 Over the following weeks, says Tomlinson, F received 12,000 dollars, but resisted all efforts to lure him to London and provided no secrets.