The Greatest Traitor (50 page)

I should mention one other Blake interview that proved particularly helpful – Phillip Knightley’s in the
Sunday Times
, in autumn 1990. Knightley and his ‘Insight’ team are experts in this field and produced possibly the best book ever written on the Cambridge Spies,
The Philby Conspiracy
, which contains a masterly introduction by John Le Carré.

Another key source, which provided a detailed insight into Blake’s life, was the lengthy series of interviews his wife Gillian gave to the
Sunday Telegraph
in December 1961. They were published over three weekends, but I have learned more by reading the full, unedited
transcripts in the papers of Michael Wolff, the freelance journalist who conducted them. These are lodged in the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, to which I am grateful for its permission to quote excerpts.

I must highlight three other valuable sources. One is a file, housed at the Ministry of Justice, containing statements from SIS and Special Branch officers (heavily redacted, but illuminating nonetheless) for Blake’s trial in 1961. The second is a voluminous set of Home Office papers, released under a Freedom of Information request in 2008, which is essentially the official record of Blake’s incarceration and includes letters from the prison authorities, MI5, and Blake himself. The third is a Metropolitan Police dossier featuring the full reports of the investigation into Blake’s escape, including prisoner statements.

Among all the books I read during my research, those of Michael Randle and Sean Bourke were invaluable in helping me piece together the story of the plot to spring Blake from jail. As for his time in Korea, I was well served by the vivid accounts of his fellow captives Larry Zellers, Philip Crosbie and Philip Deane. Three other books were invaluable in informing and guiding my thoughts on different aspects of Blake’s story –
The Meaning of Treason
by Rebecca West,
The Korean War
by Max Hastings, and
MI6 and the Machinery of Spying
by Philip H.J. Davies.

Principal Source Material

The Bower Tapes – from interviews for BBC Inside Story’s
The Confession
.

Gillian Blake interviews – Churchill Archives Centre, the Papers of Michael Wolff WLFF 1 (1/1).

Blake Papers at Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

CRIM 1/3650 (Ministry of Justice – Blake trial statements).

National Archives – Police reports into Blake escape (HO 278/7).

National Archives – Police inquiry into Blake, including prisoner statements (MEPO 2/10736 and 10737).

Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Files – Blake’s 100 agents ‘liquidated’ (MFS – HA11 Counter-intelligence division Nr. 3469).

CIA History Staff/Center for the Study of Intelligence – Documents on the Intelligence War in Berlin, 1946—1961 (Berlin Tunnel documents).

‘The Blake Escape – The Men Who Sprang a Superspy’ (an episode of Thames TV’s
This Week
), 26 April 1989, for quotes from Phil Morris, Richard Helms and Will Knight.

Other Specific Source Material

National Archives – Soviet officials stationed in UK in late 1940s and 1950s (KV 6/70-73).

National Archives – Royal Patriotic School (KV 4/339).

National Archives – Churchill and bugging (DEFE 13/16 and DEFE 134/352).

National Archives – ‘Plan for Holland’ (HS 6/724).

National Archives – JIC 1947 report on Soviet threat (PREM 8/893).

National Archives – Attlee cabinet meeting on Korean invasion (PREM 8/893).

Nikolai Andreyevich Loenko –
Trud,
1 December 1998;
Vladivostok News
, 7 October 1999 and 26 January 2007;
Novgorod Gazetta
, 8 December 1998; plus additional Russian sources.

Dr Elizabeth Hill – Department of Collections, Imperial War Museum (audio interview). Story about her and Guy Burgess from John Costello and Oleg Tsaryev’s
Deadly Illusions,
reproduced in Geoffrey Elliott and Harold Shukman’s
Secret Classrooms.

David Murphy and Sergei Kondrashev discussion – Allied Museum, Berlin.

Charles and Hazel Seymour, Richard Helms, Joe Evans, Jean Meadmore, Kenneth De Courcy, Charles Wheeler, Sir James Easton, Vasily Dozhdalev, Major G.A.Courtice interviews – The Bower Tapes.

Sergei Kondrashev (on Blake’s escape) – Courtesy of the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives.

Wilson, Heath and Dick White meeting re: Blake escape – National Archives (PREM 13).

Albert Behar’s war records – National Archives (W0 363/364), material supplied by
Fourteeneighteen Research
(www.fourteeneighteen.co.uk).

Mountbatten Report on Prison Escapes – National Archives HO 391/5.

Kenneth Cohen – quote from his unpublished memoir, 1982 (courtesy of his son Colin).

Maurice Firth – quote and story from Tom Bower’s
The Perfect English Spy
, plus other private SIS sources.

Iris Peake – information from Dr Emma Dawnay.

Blake childhood quotes (Dina Regoort and Henrik Dentro) – from E.H. Cookridge’s
George Blake – Double Agent.

Websites

www.cia.gov

www.englandspiel.eu

www.fourteeneighteen.co.uk

www.koreanwarexpow.org/info/tigers

www.rotterdam4045.nl

www.naval-history.net

Books

Aldrich, Richard J.
The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence,
Overlook Press, 2002.

Allbeury, Ted.
Shadow of Shadows
, Panther Books, 1983.

Andrew, Christopher and Oleg Gordievsky.
KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev
, Sceptre, 1990.

Andrew, Christopher.
The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5
, Penguin Books, 2009.

Bagley, Tennent H.
Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries and Deadly Games
, Yale University Press, 2007.

Blake, George.
No Other Choice
, Jonathan Cape, 1990.

Bourke, Sean.
The Springing of George Blake
, Mayflower Books, 1971.

Bower, Tom.
The Perfect English Spy
, Heinemann, 1995.

Butler, Ewan.
City Divided: Berlin 1955
, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1955.

Catterall, Peter (ed.).
The Macmillan Diaries: Prime Minister and After 1957–1966,
Macmillan, 2011.

Cavendish, Anthony,
Inside Intelligence: The Revelations of an MI6 Officer
, HarperCollins, 1997.

Colville, John.
The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries 1941 – April 1955
, Hodder and Stoughton, 1985.

Cookridge, E.H.
George Blake: Double Agent
, Hodder Paperback, 1970.

Costello, John and Oleg Tsarev.
Deadly Illusions,
Crown, 1993.

Crosbie, Philip.
March Till They Die
, Browne and Nolan, 1955.

Davies, Philip H.J.
MI6 and the Machinery of Spying
, Frank Cass, 2004.

Davies, S.J.
In Spite of Dungeons
, Alan Sutton, 1992.

Dean, William F.
General Dean’s Story
, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954.

Deane, Philip.
Captive in Korea
, Hamish Hamilton, 1953.

Donner, Donald.
A Death March and Nightmares
, Trafford Publishing, 2004.

Dorril, Stephen,
MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations
, Fourth Estate, 2001.

Dourlein, Pieter.
Inside North Pole
, Time-Life Books Inc., 1988.

Eden, Sir Anthony.
Full Circle
, Cassell, 1960.

Elliott, Geoffrey and Harold Shukman.
Secret Classrooms: An Untold Story of the Cold War,
Faber and Faber, 2011.

Foot, M.R.D. (ed.).
Holland At War Against Hitler: Anglo-Dutch Relations 1940–1945
, Routledge, 1990.

Foot, M.R.D. and J.M. Langley.
MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939–1945
, The Bodley Head, 1979.

Freeman, David.
The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock
, Overlook Press, 1984.

Giskes, H.J.
London Calling North Pole
, Bantam, 1982.

Glees, Anthony.
The Secrets of the Service
, Carroll and Graf, 1987.

Haslam, Jonathan.
Russia’s Cold War
, Yale University Press, 2011.

Hastings, Max.
The Korean War
, Pan Books, 2010.

Helms, Richard (with William Hood).
A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the CIA
, Ballantine Books, 2003.

Hood, William.
Mole
, W.W. Norton, 1982.

Hunt, R.N. Carew.
The Theory and Practice of Communism
, Pelican Books, 1964.

Hyde, H. Montgomery.
George Blake: Superspy
, Constable, 1987.

Jeffery, Keith.
MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949,
Bloomsbury, 2011.

Knopp, Guido.
Top Spione
, New American Library, 1997.

Macmillan, Harold.
At the End of the Day: 1961–63
, Macmillan, 1973.

Maddrell, Paul.
Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany 1945–51
, Oxford University Press, 2006.

Madsen, Chris.
The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament 1942–1947
, Frank Cass, 1998.

Malkasian, Carter.
The Korean War 1950–1953
, Osprey Publishing, 2001.

Marks, Leo.
Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker’s War 1941–1945,
HarperCollins, 1999.

Martin, David C.
Wilderness of Mirrors
, Lyons Press, 1980.

McEwan, Ian.
The Innocent
, Vintage, 2005.

Ministry of Defence.
Treatment of British Prisoners of War in Korea
, HMSO, 1955.

Modin, Yuri.
My Five Cambridge Friends
, Headline, 1994.

Moran, Lord.
Churchill: The Struggle for Survival 1945–60
, Carroll and Graf, 2006.

Murphy, David, Sergei Kondrashev and George Bailey.
Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War
, Yale University Press, 1997.

Page, Bruce, David Leitch and Phillip Knightley.
The Philby Conspiracy
, Ballantine Books, 1981.

Perrault, Gilles.
A Man Apart: The Life of Henri Curiel
, Zed Books Ltd., 1987.

Philby, Kim.
My Secret War
, Arrow Books, 2003.

Philby, Rufina.
The Private Life of Kim Philby: The Moscow Years
, St Ermin’s Press, 1999.

Pincher, Chapman.
Traitors
, Penguin Books, 1988.

Randle, Michael and Pat Pottle.
The Blake Escape
, Harrap Books, 1990.

Rankin, Nicholas.
Ian Fleming’s Commandos: The Story of 30 Assault Unit in WW2,
Faber and Faber, 2011.

Sampson, Anthony.
Anatomy of Britain
, Hodder and Stoughton, 1962.

Schecter, Jerrold L. and Peter S. Deriabin.
The Spy Who Saved the World,
Macmillan, 1992.

Shackley, Ted.
Spymaster: My Life in the CIA
, Potomac Books, 2005.

Stafford, David.
Spies Beneath Berlin
, John Murray, 2002.

Steury, Donald P. (ed.).
Documents on the Intelligence War in Berlin, 1946 to 1961,
CIA History Staff, 1999.

Sun-Tzu.
The Art of War
, Penguin Books, 2003.

Tempest, Paul (ed.).
The Arabists of Shemlan: MECAS Memoirs 1944–78,
Stacey International, 2006.

Vassall, John.
The Autobiography of a Spy
, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1975.

West, Nigel.
Seven Spies Who Changed The World
, Mandarin, 1991.

West, Rebecca.
The Meaning of Treason
, Penguin Books, 1965.

Wilkinson, Nicholas.
Secrecy and the Media: The Official History of the United Kingdom’s D-Notice System
, Routledge, 2009.

Wolf, Markus (with Anne McElvoy).
Memoirs of a Spymaster
, Pimlico, 1997.

Woodward, Leslie.
My Life As A Spy
, Pan Books, 2006.

Wright, Peter (with Paul Greengrass).
Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer
, Viking Penguin, 1987.

Zbarsky, Ilya and Samuel Hutchinson.
Lenin’s Embalmers
, The Harvill Press, 1998.

Zellers, Larry.
In Enemy Hands: A Prisoner in North Korea
, University Press of Kentucky, 2000.

Zeno,
Life
, Pan Books, 1970.

Index

The abbreviation GB refers to George Blake

Abel, Rudolph
ref 1
,
ref 2

Aberfan colliery disaster
ref 1

Acheson, Dean
ref 1

Afghanistan
ref 1

Alatortsev, Vladimir
ref 1

Alexander, Conel Hugh O’Donel
ref 1

Allan, Colonel Arthur
ref 1
,
ref 2

Allan, Gillian
see
Blake, Gillian (GB’s first wife)

Allbeury, Ted
ref 1

Allegranza, Helen
ref 1

Alliott, Mr Justice
ref 1
,
ref 2
,
ref 3

An Ho Sang
ref 1

Andropov, Yuri
ref 1

Anglo-Russian Interpretation Agency
ref 1

anti-Semitism
ref 1
,
ref 2
,
ref 3
,
ref 4

Arms Race
ref 1

atomic spies
ref 1
,
ref 2

atomic weapons
ref 1
,
ref 2
,
ref 3
,
ref 4
,
ref 5
,
ref 6
,
ref 7
,
ref 8