Top spy George Blake s escape aided by Limerick man Sean Bourke Limerick man Sean Bourke
British spy George Blake
BRITISH spy George Blake was sprung from London s Wormwood Scrubs prison with the help of colourful Irishman man Sean Bourke.
George Blake, who died in Russia on St Stephen s Day aged 98, was the last in a line of spies whose work for the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War proved a major embarrassment to the British security services.
Limerick man Sean Bourke and others helped Blake to escape from prison in 1966, from where he fled to Moscow.
A second cousin of actor Richard Harris and a full cousin of poet Desmond O Grady, petty criminal Bourke conspired with fellow inmates Michael Randle and Pat Pottle to spring the notorious spy to freedom.
By David Burke.
George Blake has just died aged 98 at his dacha outside Moscow where Putin’s overseas intelligence service, the SVR, was protecting him from Covid-19. Blake was held in high esteem by the Russians. Putin has said that the “memory of this legendary person will be preserved forever in our hearts”. Putin awarded him a medal in 2007.
Blake was arrested in London in 1961 and sentenced to 42 years imprisonment but escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 with the aid of Sean Bourke from Limerick. He then spent two months in London before making his way to East Germany.
The story of his escape and the time he spent in hiding in London is astonishing. Blake may have been helped by Soviet agents inside the British Establishment. The Director-General of MI5, Roger Hollis, 1956-65, was believed by many to be one such agent. He retired the year before Blake made his escape, something which gave him four years to help the KGB prepare a plan to break Blake free.
OBITUARY: Having spent 35 years following the trail of George Blake s treachery, interviewing friends, family, colleagues and victims, I understand the scale of his betrayal. And having met him in Moscow in the late 1980s, it amazes me to this day how anyone could have accepted Blake as a legitimate MI6 officer. Born George Behar in Holland, Blake is probably best known as the spy who received one of the longest jail sentences handed out by a British criminal court, a total of 42 years. He is equally notorious for having served less than six years before escaping to the Soviet Union on October 22 1966. But in the intelligence community, he is remembered as the first MI6 officer to be convicted of betraying his country.