“The Happy Traitor” – A Conversation on George Blake with Biographer Simon Kuper

SpyCast

News, Education, History

4.4 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2021

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

He was a Soviet agent who was “turned” by Karl Marx after reading Das Kapital – which led him to give up the important operations, a host of MI6 agents and a treasure trove of secret intelligence… George Blake was a courier in the Dutch resistance, an MI6 intelligence officer, a language student at Cambridge, a “Vice-Consul” in South Korea, a prisoner in North Korea, and a hero returning to Britain in 1953. He would escape from a British prison after getting caught and would live out the rest of his life as “The Happy Traitor” in Moscow before dying in 2020. What did author Simon Kuper think when he sat down to personally interview Blake before his death? Well, you’ll have to listen to find out. SpyCast listeners can win free copies of the book by entering here: https://bit.ly/3mW1YmL

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Spycast listeners, I'm Maria Varmazis, host of another N2K podcast called T-Minus Space
0:10.7	Daily.
0:11.7	I'm a big fan of Andrew Hammond and Spycast.
0:16.2	That voice, right?
0:18.2	I love the world of spies and intelligence, and I bet you do too.
0:22.1	That's why I know you'll also love our show T-Minus Space Daily.
0:28.0	If you want to unravel the world of space mysteries, T-Minus Space Daily gives you the latest
0:34.4	from across the space industry around the world and into the cosmos.
0:40.2	If you're looking to separate the signal from the noise and stay current on what's happening
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0:52.1	Space Daily.
0:53.9	We are T-Minus.
0:55.8	Now sit back, relax, and back to you, Andrew.
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2:03.7	Welcome to Spycast.
2:05.5	My name is Dr. Andrew Hammond, historian and curator here at the International Spy Museum in Washington,
	...

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