Cold War spy story: The Blake escape

On the night of 22 October 1966, the deputy governor of Wormwood Scrubs telephoned Shepherd's Bush police station in west London. "I have just been informed by my chief that we have lost one of our chaps over the wall. We think it's Blake."

"Blake?" asked the duty constable. "Yes," came the reply. "The one doing 42 years. He went over the east wall. He's probably in prison grey. Look, I'm a bit tucked up at the moment, I'm in the middle of releasing a man. I'll ring you back when I get more information."

Forty-two years after his dramatic escape from British custody, the startling truth about one of this country's most notorious spies is revealed in secret Home Office documents and personal letters written by the MI6 double agent while he was on the run. In heart-felt correspondence with his mother, George Blake tells of his future plans for his family while security service memos expose the total intelligence failure leading up to his break-out and the subsequent British helplessness in trying to establish his whereabouts.

The documents, all released by the Home Office under the Freedom of Information Act, include a memo from Roger Hollis, then head of MI5, written two years before Blake's break-out, which reassures the Government that the spy was being too closely watched for him to attempt an escape, as well as papers that show he was a model and trusted inmate who appeared to have come to terms with his exceptionally long prison sentence.

Blake, who was born in the Netherlands, was sentenced to 42 years' imprisonment after a trial in 1961 at the Old Bailey in which he was found guilty of breaching the Official Secrets Act by betraying dozens of British agents working in the Middle East, many of whom are thought to have been executed.

In his memoirs, Blake later said it was his experience of America's indiscriminate bombing in Korea, where he was being held as a prisoner by the Communist forces, which turned him against the West. At the time of his conviction, many people thought Blake's prison sentence, then the longest jail term for such a crime, was too harsh a punishment.

Two such sympathisers were Pat Pottle and Michael Randle, founder members of an anti-nuclear direct action group, also serving sentences in Wormwood Scrubs. Together with Sean Bourke, an Irishman with a criminal past who also met Blake in prison, they planned the break-out and his eventual disappearance behind the Iron Curtain. Pottle and Michael Randle confessed 22 years later but were found not guilty at a trial at the Old Bailey.

It has now emerged that in May 1964, the prison authorities were alerted to an alleged attempt to spring Blake. But Hollis, who was later suspected of being a Soviet spy, tried to put Home Office minds at rest: he wrote that the source "has a history of mental instability, is incapable of dissociating fact and fantasy", adding that "the escape plot was a figment of [blank's] psychopathic tendencies: he may even have gone to the length of approaching Blake".

When a similar story appeared in the People newspaper claiming that a plot to free Blake had been foiled by another prisoner, Blake actually petitioned the governor to demand that the Home Office request a correction saying that the story casted "grave doubts on my moral conduct". The prison authorities appeared to sympathise with Blake's position and suggested offering him legal assistance to sue the People for defamation.

"It appears we did not do anything to deny the story to the People at the time," wrote one of the governors. "I feel we owe it to Blake without prejudice to his right to seek redress in law, to deny the story and ask for a correction. Such a denial should take the form of a letter from the director of prisons ... and clarify the fact that Blake was no way involved?"

Two years later Blake climbed through a window at the end of his prison landing, climbed down a rope ladder, and made his way to Moscow.

An MI5 report dated 13 January 1967 quotes an FBI report suggesting that the spy was living in the south of the France and a member of the public wrote to the Government claiming a sighting of him in Bermuda, the file shows. But MI5 was sure that Blake had succeeded in reaching the Soviet Union. The report says: "An extremely delicate source has indicated that shortly before Christmas an unnamed man arrived in East Berlin who was considered important enough to be met by the deputy head of the KGB. This individual possessed only the clothes he stood up in. The possibility that this man was Blake cannot be discounted." Imagine the Government's surprise when, three months later, Blake's mother hands MI5 a letter written by her son and bearing an Egyptian postmark.

Although Blake is careful to keep the security services guessing about his exact whereabouts, it is clear that he is still not yet behind the Iron Curtain. He also expresses hopes of soon being reunited with his family: "At long last I am able to write to let you know that I am well and in complete safety so that you need not worry about me any more. I would have written much earlier but in the very special circumstances that I found myself it was impossible to get in touch, longing though I was to do so. Even now, for reasons over which I have no control, I cannot tell you where I am."

Fearing that the letter would be intercepted, Blake in fact sent at least three more to addresses in England with instructions to pass them on to his mother. One was sent to a family friend at Shenley Hill House, Radlett, Hertfordshire. It reads: "Mammie, I need not tell you how worried I am about you and how I am longing for the day when I can hear from you ... Courage mother and take good care of yourself. You are always in my thoughts. All my love and kisses, Poek [Blake's Dutch nickname] who hopes to see you soon." He also confides to his mother that although he was deeply hurt by his recent divorce from his wife, with whom he had three children, he is still willing to take her back.

Last year, President Vladimir Putin recognised Blake's 85th birthday by awarding him the Order of Friendship, one of Russia's highest honours, for services to Soviet espionage.