Commander Anthony Tosswill Courtney, OBE, RN (16 May 1908 – 24 January 1988) was a British Royal Navy officer and politician.
While a Member of Parliament, he was a victim of a plot apparently instituted by the KGB to discredit him, which appeared to contribute to the loss of his seat.
During the first two years of the Second World War he was on the staff of the Admiral commanding the 3rd Battle Squadron and the North Atlantic Escort Force, based in Halifax, Canada.
He had been reselected to fight the seat, but then Courtney was chosen to follow Ian Harvey as Conservative candidate for Harrow East in early 1959.
In 1962, while on a business trip to Moscow, he demanded a personal visit to see Nikita Khrushchev over the case of Greville Wynne, a British businessman accused of spying by the Soviets.
In January and March 1965, anonymous letters including pictures of Courtney with Zina Volkova (a guide with Intourist, the Soviet tourist board) were sent to him and his stepson and Alec Douglas-Home, leader of the Conservative Party.
The photographs dated from four years previously: Courtney's first wife, Elizabeth Stokes, had died of a heart attack on 1 March 1961, and he had a brief affair with Volkova during the British Industrial Exhibition in May.
The satirical magazine Private Eye did run the story (although it knew the KGB was behind it), but it was largely kept quiet; however, rumours did circulate in Harrow.