George Blake was a spy with Britain's Secret Intelligence Service and worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union.
33 Facts About George Blake
2.
George Blake became a communist and decided to work for the MGB while a prisoner during the Korean War.
3.
George Blake was not one of the Cambridge Five spies, although he associated with Donald Maclean and Kim Philby after reaching the Soviet Union.
4.
George Blake was born George Behar in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in 1922.
5.
George Blake was the son of a Protestant Dutch mother, Catherine, and an Egyptian father of Sephardi Jewish origin who was a naturalised British subject.
6.
George Blake was named George after George V of the United Kingdom.
7.
George Blake later attended Downing College, Cambridge to study Russian.
8.
In 1991, Blake said that his encounter with Curiel, who was a decade older and already a Marxist, shaped his views in later life.
9.
George Blake intended to marry an MI6 secretary, Iris Peake, but her family prevented the marriage because of Blake's Jewish background and the relationship ended.
10.
George Blake was posted thereafter to the British legation in Seoul, South Korea, under Vyvyan Holt, arriving on 6 November 1948.
11.
Under cover as a vice-consul, George Blake's mission was to gather intelligence on Communist North Korea, Communist China, and the Soviet Far East.
12.
In 1961, George Blake fell under suspicion after revelations by Polish defector Michael Goleniewski and others.
13.
George Blake was arrested when he arrived in London after being summoned from Lebanon, where he had been enrolled at the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies.
14.
Three days into his interrogation, George Blake denied he was tortured or blackmailed by the North Koreans.
15.
George Blake then gave his MI6 interrogators a full confession.
16.
Five years into his imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs, George Blake escaped with the help of three men he had met in jail, namely Sean Bourke and two anti-nuclear campaigners, Michael Randle and Pat Pottle.
17.
On 22 October 1966, George Blake broke a window at the end of the corridor where his cell was located.
18.
George Blake then used it to climb over the wall and they drove off to a safe house.
19.
George Blake then spent several days moving between Randle and Pottle's friends' houses, including that of Rev John Papworth in Earls Court.
20.
In 1991, George Blake testified by video recording when Randle and Pottle were put on trial for aiding his escape.
21.
George Blake said that he had offered his services to the Soviet Union because he viewed communism as "a great experiment of mankind, to create a more just society, to create, in fact, the kingdom of God in this world".
22.
George Blake didn't want to know that many people he betrayed were executed.
23.
George Blake later married again, in the Soviet Union in 1968 to Ida Mikhailovna Kareyeva, with whom he had one child.
24.
In late 2007, George Blake was awarded the Order of Friendship on his 85th birthday by Vladimir Putin.
25.
George Blake wrote that Blake, the 85-year-old colonel of foreign intelligence, "still takes an active role in the affairs of the secret service".
26.
In 2012, George Blake celebrated his 90th birthday, still living in Moscow on a KGB pension.
27.
George Blake's eyesight was failing and he described himself as "virtually blind".
28.
Five years later, George Blake remained committed to Russia and to communism.
29.
George Blake died on 26 December 2020, aged 98, in Moscow.
30.
The RIA Novosti news agency first reported George Blake's death, citing Russia's SVR foreign intelligence agency.
31.
George Blake was buried with military honours at Moscow's Troyekurovskoye Cemetery.
32.
Alfred Hitchcock planned to make a film, The Short Night, based on George Blake, but died before doing so.
33.
George Blake appears as a character in Ian McEwan's novel The Innocent.