Jenifer Hart

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 John Fischer Williams, a barrister. 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. The BBC revelations about her Communist associations led to an article in The Sunday Times, referring to her as "a Russian spy". She and her husband threatened to sue the paper, which later printed an apology. Herbert Hart had a nervous breakdown shortly afterwards, which was attributed to the stress of the situation. ==Personal life and death==

Jenifer and Herbert Hart had four children: a daughter and three sons. 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) ==References==