George Blake George Blake ( born George Behar 11 November 1922 ) , is a former British spy known for having been a double agent in the service of the Soviet Union . Discovered in 1961 and sentenced to 42 years in prison , he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1966 and fled to the USSR . He was not one of the Cambridge spies , although he is often grouped with them . Biography . Early life . Blake was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 1922 , the son of a Dutch mother from a Protestant background , and an Egyptian Jewish father who was a naturalised British subject . He was named George after King George V . His father , Albert Behar , fought against the Ottoman Empire in the First World War despite his origins in Constantinople ( now Istanbul ) and received awards from the French and British for his gallantry . The Behars lived a comfortable existence in Holland until Albert ' s death in 1936 . The thirteen - year - old George was sent to live with relatives in Egypt , where he continued his education at the English School in Cairo . While in Cairo , he was close to his cousin Henri Curiel , who was later to become a prominent member of the Communist Party of Egypt . In 1991 Blake said that his encounter with Curiel , who was a decade older and already a communist , shaped his views in later life . As a teenager Blake was a runner for the anti - Nazi Dutch resistance under the " nom de guerre " of Max de Vries . He was interned but released temporarily because of his youth . He would have been re - interned on his 18th birthday had he not escaped to London , disguised as a monk , in the meantime . In England he changed his name to Blake and worked for the Secret Intelligence Service ( MI6 ) . He intended to marry an MI6 secretary , Iris Peake , but her family prevented the marriage because of Blake ' s Jewish background and the relationship ended . Blake said later that he switched sides during the Korean War after being greatly influenced by it . In an interview he was once asked , " Is there one incident that triggered your decision to effectively change sides ? " , to which Blake responded , " It was the relentless bombing of small Korean villages by enormous American flying fortresses . Women and children and old people , because the young men were in the army . We might have been victims ourselves . It made me feel ashamed of belonging to these overpowering , technically superior countries fighting against what seemed to me defenceless people . I felt I was on the wrong side . . . that it would be better for humanity if the Communist system prevailed , that it would put an end to war . " Espionage activities . For the duration of World War II , Blake ' s work involved translating German documents captured by British agents , and interrogating Germans captured in France following the D - Day landings . At the end of the war , he was posted to Hamburg and put in charge of the interrogation of German U - boat captains . Following a crash - course in Russian at Cambridge University in 1948 he was posted to the British embassy in Seoul , the capital of the Republic of Korea . Blake had been given the task of trying to establish an agent network in Korea . Within months of his arrival in Seoul , on 24 June 1950 , the city was captured by the advancing North Korean Army and Blake was taken prisoner by the communist forces , while he was serving at the British Legation under Vyvyan Holt . After capture by the North Koreans , and after reading the works of Karl Marx during his three - year detention , he became a Marxist . Following his release in 1953 , Blake returned to Britain as a hero . In 1955 he was sent by MI6 to work as a case officer in Berlin , where his task was to recruit Soviet officers as double agents . It was here that he made contact with the KGB and informed them of the details of British and American operations . In the course of nine years he betrayed details of some 400 MI6 agents to the Soviets , destroying most of MI6 ' s operations in Eastern Europe . Blake later said of this , " I don ' t know what I handed over because it was so much " . In 1959 , Blake became aware of a Central Intelligence Agency mole inside GRU , and was thus instrumental in exposing P . S . Popov , who was executed in 1960 . In 1961 he was exposed as a Soviet agent by Polish defector Michael Goleniewski . He was arrested when he arrived in London after being summoned from Lebanon , where he was enrolled at the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies ( MECAS ) . The maximum sentence for any one offence under section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 is 14 years , but his activities were divided into five time periods charged as five offences and , in May 1961 after an " in camera " trial at the Old Bailey , he was sentenced to the maximum term of 14 years consecutively on each of three counts of spying for a potential enemy and 14 years concurrently on both the two remaining counts - a total of 42 years imprisonment - by the Lord Chief Justice , Lord Parker of Waddington . This sentence was said by newspapers to represent one year for each of the agents killed when he betrayed them , although this claim appears to be an invention . It was the longest sentence ( excluding life terms ) ever handed down by a British court , until Nezar Hindawi was sentenced to 45 years for the attempted bombing of an El Al jet . Escape from prison . Five years later , on 22 October 1966 , Blake escaped from Wormwood Scrubs prison with the assistance of three men whom he met in jail : Sean Bourke and two anti - nuclear campaigners , Michael Randle and Pat Pottle . The escape was masterminded by Bourke , who originally approached Michael Randle only for financial help with the escape . The escape was financed by the film director Tony Richardson . Randle , however , became more involved and suggested they bring Pottle in on the plan as well , as he had suggested springing Blake to Randle in 1962 when they were both still in prison . Their motives for helping Blake to escape were their belief that the 42 - year sentence was " inhuman " and because of a personal liking of Blake . Bourke had smuggled a walkie - talkie to Blake to communicate with him whilst in jail . It was decided that Blake would break a window at the end of the corridor where his cell was located . Then between 6 and 7 pm , whilst most of the other inmates and guards were at the weekly film showing , Blake could climb through the window , slide down a porch and get to the perimeter wall , where Bourke would throw a rope ladder made of knitting needles over the wall so that Blake could climb over and they would then drive off to the safe house . During the escape , Blake fractured his wrist jumping from the perimeter wall , but apart from that it all went according to plan . This incident is mentioned in the book " Life " by Keith Richards . After the escape , it became apparent that the safe house Bourke had organised was not suitable as it was a bedsit that was cleaned by the landlady once a week , so Blake then spent several days moving between Randle and Pottle ' s friends ' houses before Blake and Bourke moved in with Pottle until they were ready to get through customs and escape to the Soviet Union . Moscow . Blake fled to the USSR . He divorced his wife , with whom he had three children , and started a new life . In 1990 he published his autobiography " No Other Choice " ( ISBN 0 - 671 - 74155 - 1 ) . The book ' s British publisher had paid him about £60 , 000 before the government intervened to stop him profiting from sales . He later filed a complaint charging the British government with human rights violation for taking nine years to decide on his case and was awarded £5 , 000 in compensation by the European Court of Human Rights . In an interview with NBC News in 1991 , Blake said he regretted the deaths of the agents he had betrayed . In late 2007 , Blake was awarded the Order of Friendship on his 85th birthday by Vladimir Putin . Blake has written a new book , " Transparent Walls " , the daily " Vzglyad " ( " The View " ) reported . Sergey Lebedev , the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service ( SVR ) of the Russian Federation , writes in the book ’ s foreword that despite the book being devoted to the past , it is about the present as well . He also wrote that Blake , the 85 - year - old Colonel of Foreign Intelligence , " still takes an active role in the affairs of the secret service . " As of 2012 he is still living in Moscow , Russia , on a KGB pension . He remains a committed Marxist - Leninist . Blake denied being a traitor , insisting that he had never felt British : " To betray , you first have to belong . I never belonged . " References . BBC World Service radio . George Blake Escapes 24 October 2011 http : / / www . bbc . co . uk / programmes / p00krvrd