British double agent who betrayed hundreds of western spies to the Soviet Union, where he lived after escaping from jail
George Blake, who has died aged 98, was the most notorious Soviet agent inside Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Interned by the Nazis in the Netherlands, recruited by MI6, then by the KGB after he was captured during the Korean war, unmasked by a defecting Polish intelligence officer and sentenced at the Old Bailey to an unprecedented term in jail, Blake made a spectacular escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison in northwest London.
Blake was convicted of spying in 1961 after a trial conducted mainly behind closed doors. In defiance of convention, Lord Parker, the lord chief justice, handed down maximum consecutive, rather than concurrent, sentences, sending Blake down for 42 years. An astonishing exchange that only came to light only in 2016 may help to explain the severity of the sentence. Parker phoned Harold Macmillan, the prime minister, to consult him before passing sentence. Yet even Macmillan expressed surprise, noting in his diary the next day: “The LCJ has passed a savage sentence – 42 years!”
