'Those people who were betrayed were not innocent people. They were no better nor worse than I am. It's all part of the intelligence world.' George Blake was the last remaining Cold War spy. As a Senior Officer in the British Intelligence Service who was double agent for the Soviet Union, his actions had devastating consequences for Britain. Yet he was also one of the least known double agents and remained unrepentant. In 1961, Blake was sentenced to 42 years' imprisonment for betraying to the KGB all of the Western operations in which he was involved, and the names of hundreds of British agents working behind the Iron Curtain, about 40 of whom were executed. This was the longest sentence for espionage ever to have been handed down by a British court. On the surface, Blake was a charming, intelligent and engaging man and most importantly a seemingly committed patriot. Underneath, he was a ruthlessly efficient mole and key player in the infamous 'Berlin Tunnel' operation. This illuminating biography traces Blake from humble beginnings as a teenage courier for the Dutch underground during the Second World War, to the sensational prison-break from Wormwood Scrubs that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's last film, and finally to his old age in a dacha outside Moscow, where author Simon Kuper interviewed him. MI6 has never made its files on him public and through a combination of personal interviews, research and unique access to Stasi records, this biography unravels who Blake truly was, what he was capable of, and why he did it. 280 page illustrated paperback.
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