Twenty years ago, I made a programme for Radio 4 on Soviet military maps from the Cold War. I needed expert opinion on the highly detailed maps I had of London and Blackpool and Oleg Gordievsky, master spy of the late Cold War era, who died on Friday at the age of 86, seemed the perfect choice.
Thinking about the interview the following day I wondered if we really had been in his home. Dog food and no dog?
After a few phone calls, my producer Marya Burgess and I took a midday train from Waterloo Station to a location that, for the first time, I can name as Godalming. Our instructions were precise: to catch a particular train and go straight out of the station where we would find Oleg waiting for us.
He was just where we were told he would be, standing by the open door of his car with the engine running. Clearly old habits die hard for vintage spies. We introduced ourselves and got into his car, an ordinary family hatchback, for the journey to the safe house where we would do our interview. So far, so George Smiley.
But it seems that when you’re a retired master spy there’s no need to rush and we set off at a leisurely pace, which was mostly but not always on the correct side of the road.
After only a few minutes, we arrived at the safe house, a non-descript bungalow in a non-descript road. He led the way into what I took to be his home. It was good to see that MI6 looked after its double agents so well; the house was nicely furnished and decorated with a combined living/dining room and a hatch through to the kitchen. There was an expensive leather recliner in front of the television and a pair of dumb-bells next to the chair. One wall was dedicated to shelves filled with improving books. On the kitchen hatch were two large tins of dog food but with no dog to be seen. The patio windows were slightly ajar.
Oleg Gordievsky was an excellent interviewee and was genuinely intrigued by the Soviet maps I showed him, which he said he had never seen before and would be of no use to a KGB agent in London. But he declared it a wonderful map and reminisced about his time in the Soviet Embassy in London, with the KGB in the loft and the GRU (military intelligence) in the cellar. “There were dozens and dozens of British people willing to spy for us”, he said. “Updating a map like this would not be too complicated.”
Once we had finished the interview he said he would take us back to the station. As we left the house I offered to close the patio windows but he said not to bother.
Thinking about the interview the following day I wondered if we really had been in his home. Dog food and no dog? Out with its owner. Or maybe both were in the garden, ready to come to Oleg’s aid through the open patio windows if he cried for help.
I wrote him a thank you letter which I put in an envelope with his name on it, inside another envelope addressed to ‘The Occupier’ and then the address which I had noted as we left.
A few days later, I got a charming letter in reply from Oleg Gordievski, leading spy of the twentieth century, congratulating me on my tradecraft. Interviews really don’t get much more satisfying than that.
The programme, called ‘Balalaikas in Blackpool’ went out on Radio 4 that summer. The letter was sadly destroyed when our house caught fire a few years ago. But I still have an autographed copy of his autobiography ‘Next Stop Execution’.
He was a nice man. I hope he died as well as he lived. I hope he didn’t die alone.
Oleg Gordievsky. Born Moscow 10 October 1938; died Surrey 21 March 2025
