About
Roley Thomas is a writer and historian
A biography of the MI5 officer, scientist and banker Victor Rothschild - to be published in February 2027 - is his non-fiction debut.
Roley is a 29-year-old writer and historian. He grew up between London and West Cork, Ireland, where he first developed his love of history, surrounded by medieval castles, iron-age hill forts and fabulous - if dubious - stories.
His first book, The Last Secret: Victor Rothschild and the Cambridge Five, will be published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in February 2027. It draws on recently declassified MI5 files to tell the astonishing true story of Victor Rothschild - the aristocrat, scientist and wartime MI5 officer whose biggest mistake was trusting his greatest friends.
His interests as a writer focus on Britain’s intelligence agencies during the Second World War and the spies that forged them. More widely, he is fascinated by Britain in the early 20th century as a melting pot of social and cultural change.
Roley went to Ampleforth College and read English Language and Literature at Trinity College, Oxford. After graduating, he joined a global risk and cyber security company in London, where he splits his time between writing, work and travel.
“Writing The Last Secret has been a great adventure. From long nights reading thousands of pages of newly released MI5 documents, to conversations with those who knew Rothschild and visits to extraordinary archives across Cambridge, Kew and the City of London - I have loved every minute of piecing together one of the great stories of British intelligence in the 20th century.”
— Roley Thomas, 2026
Young Historians Drinks at the Chalke Valley History Festival 2025. Photo by Martin Cook