History of intelligence/ Russia

A very cosmopolitan spy

A small, hunched, nearly blind 92-year-old sits in the kitchen of his dacha outside Moscow, sweetly chatting to a visitor in Dutch-accented English. This is George Blake — “the most dangerous British traitor of the cold war”, according to George Carey’s new documentary Masterspy of Moscow. Disclosure: I appear briefly in the film. That’s because in 2012 I spent a pleasant morning with Blake at his dacha. I promised him then I wouldn’t publish my interview in English during his lifetime. I haven’t drawn from it here. But the encounter helped me understand a British spy who is unlike all the others who went over to Moscow.