Roger Hermiston

This is a riveting biography of George Blake, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) officer who spied for the Soviet Union for several years in the 1950s, was discovered, tried and sentenced to the unprecedentedly long prison term of 42 years, sprung from Wormwood Scrubs five years later, and assisted to flee via East Germany to the Soviet Union, where he still lives today at the age of 92. His has been a fascinating life from its earliest days: the son of a British Jewish father and a Dutch mother, he was born and brought up in the Netherlands and never saw himself as British anyway. He helped the Dutch resistance under the Nazis, displaying a necessary predilection for subterfuge. He joined MI6 in the late 1940s and while working in South Korea was taken prisoner by the North Koreans during the war on the peninsula, when Kim Il Sung's forces at the height of their success swept south and captured the South Korean capital. During that time he offered his services to the Soviets, having become genuinely convinced that communism, for all its faults in practice, offered in principle a better and more just future for humankind. He was always clear that he spied on this basis and never for personal gain, so can be said to be, at one level, a man of principle, despite the damage that his actions caused for Western security and the probable (though not entirely proven) deaths of British agents. It was this feature, plus the length of his sentence, compared to the comparatively more lenient treatment of the Cambridge Five and the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs, that prompted sympathy from him on the inside and efforts by the peace campaigners Michael Randle and Pat Pottle, and petty criminal Sean Bourke, to spring him from prison and assist in his fleeing to the Soviet Union. Randle and Pottle were eventually tried for the springing much later in 1991, but acquitted by the jury. Blake settled into Soviet life better than Philby or Burgess (Maclean also settled in well) and married a Russian lady and had a son. As recently as 2007 he was awarded an Order of Friendship medal by Putin (an award that has also been bestowed on Prince Michael of Kent and Rowan Williams, among others). A fascinating story of the long, colourful and controversial life.… (mais)

A good solid account of George Blake the MI6 agents who, in the course of nine years betrayed details of some 40 MI6 agents to the Soviets, destroying most of MI6's operations in Eastern Europe.

I'd read Sean Bourke's book [b:The Springing of George Blake|3478179|The Springing of George Blake|Sean Bourke|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-6121bf4c1f669098041843ec9650ca19.png|4443339] quite a few years back and have been fascinated by this case. Particularly how the small group of non-soviet sympathisers helped to organise his escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison and subsequent journey to East Germany.

The book covers in detail his early life, capture in the Korean war and particularly the solidifying of his political views as a result his experiences.

Worthy of anyone who has an interest in the Cold War.

Anyone know of anything similar on the Portland Spy Ring? That story is definitely worth a book.

… (mais)