SPIES LIKE US!

Francis Walsingham c1532–1590

Move over, Thomas Cromwell; Walsingham was the ultimate Tudor spymaster. Principal secretary to Elizabeth I and a staunch Protestant, he made it his business to stamp out Catholicism by any means necessary. His record is formidable: he intercepted letters, employed professional forgers of seals and ordered the torture and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots and many poor old Catholic priests, along with numerous other suspected conspirators. If history weren’t always written by the victors, she’d have ended up as Bloody Queen Elizabeth

Photograph: Ken Welsh/Corbis

 

Melita Norwood 1912–2005

She was the seemingly innocuous assistant to the director of one of Britain’s atomic research centres, who coolly passed the secrets of the atom bomb to Russia for 37 years, before finally being identified in 1999. Daughter of a Latvian-born father and a communist-sympathising mother, she became known in the press as “the spy who came in from the Co-Op” as a result of the shopping bags she was carrying when her true allegiance was exposed at the age of 87. Her initial response: “Oh dear. I thought I had got away with it.” Norwood was never prosecuted for her actions. In 2014, newly released files from the Mitrokhin archive revealed that Norwood was more highly valued by the KGB than the Cambridge Five.

Photograph: Tony Harris/PA

 

How would you operate as a long term spy?

Could you operate covertly over a long period of time?

How would you keep your cover straight?

The consequences can be quite brutal getting caught!