"Spies, Lies and Exile: The Extraordinary Story of George Blake" with Simon Kuper

Simon Kuper, author of "Spies, Lies and Exile"
in conversation with Pamela Druckerman
George Blake, one of the most notorious double agents of the Cold War, died on Boxing Day 2020, aged 98. Blake stands in a long tradition of Western communists who turned traitor. He betrayed the names of hundreds of British agents to the USSR. About 40 of them are thought to have been executed. Why did the British spy go over to the Soviet Union? And what does his story tell us about the Cold War?
In 2012, Simon spent hours with Blake in his dacha outside Moscow. It turned out to be the last long interview of the spy’s life. And what a life! The son of a Dutch mother and an Egyptian-Jewish father, Blake was a teenaged courier in the Dutch wartime Resistance, joined the British secret services in London, was held captive in North Korea, converted to communism, handed over thousands of British documents to the KGB, betrayed the famous “Berlin spy tunnel” to the Russians, was finally caught by the British, received the longest jail sentence in British history, and then escaped from his London prison in a jailbreak so successful that Alfred Hitchcock spent his last decade trying to make it into a film.
In 1966 Blake made it from his London hiding-place to Moscow, where he married a Russian woman and spent the rest of his life. The New York Times' obituary of Blake is here.
Simon Kuper is a columnist for the Financial Times. He grew up mostly in the Netherlands and Britain, with South African parents. He's the author of several books; Spies, Lies and Exile is his first on espionage.
This class was co-sponsored by the Federation of Alliances Françaises USA, which promotes French language and culture through 100+ Alliance Française chapters across the U.S. www.afusa.org
www.pandemoniumu.com

[@keithireland6627]

Brilliant thankyou.

[@Flyingdutchman191]

I am a Soviet Russian Latvian who lives in the Netherlands and supports the way Comrade G. Blake looked at the world then and now!

[@TheyCMA]

this Zoom was super interesting...thank you!

[@pandemoniumu7115]

Glad you liked it!