David Burke - The Spy Who Came In From the Co-op

I first met Melita Norwood in 1997. I didnt know that she had been a spy, and like most people who knew or met her I found her a pleasant enough old lady with distinctly leftwing views. At eighty-five she was still an active member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and, for over twenty years, a fully paid-up member of the British Communist Party. Born before the Russian Revolution of 1917, she had spent over thirty-nine years in the service of the KGB and Lenins Bolshevik Revolution. She had invited me to Sunday lunch to talk about her father, Alexander Sirnis, a Latvian disciple of the Russian novelist Leo N. Tolstoy. During the First World War Alexander had been responsible for the publication of the authorized English edition of Tolstoys Diaries along with Dr C. T. Hagberg Wright of the London Library.

It was a frugal lunch, fish fingers and greens from her allotment washed down by tea served in Che Guevara mugs. My interest in her father went back to research undertaken at the Universities of Birmingham and Greenwich into the history of the Russian political migr community in Britain during the twentieth century. Melita had kept several files on Alexanders activities and on other Russians living on the south coast of England in the early years of the twentieth century. It was interesting material. Although on a first reading these files appeared to have very little to do with espionage, apart from the occasional mention of Russians who I knew had been involved in the world of secrets and espionage, they acquired greater significance once she began to talk about her spying career. In fact, I found it amusing that she should have known such figures, and when questioned on them she would laugh and say things like, Oh, so and so. He was a bit of a devil.

At the time I was teaching at Trinity & All Saints College, Leeds, and would travel by coach to London once a month to enjoy a Sunday lunch of fish fingers and greens (or the occasional kipper) and go through Melita Norwoods papers. They were enjoyable outings. Melita Norwood had a good sense of humour, and kept up with current affairs. Her favourite television personality was the presenter Jeremy Paxman, and she rarely missed an edition of Newsnight .

On 11 September 1999 I learnt that she had been a major spy. It happened at Milton Keynes coach station. I was on my way to visit her when the coach I was travelling on from Leeds to Londons Victoria coach station pulled up as usual at Milton Keynes coach station to pick up and drop off passengers. It had been an ordinary journey, and we had five minutes before the coach continued on its way to Victoria. I got off and went into the shop and cafeteria by the bus shelter to buy a newspaper, and there I came face to face with Melita Norwood staring at me from the front page of The Times . She had been accused of passing on Britains atomic secrets to Moscow. I was a little shocked, to say the least. When I got to London I immediately telephoned her. She sounded a little vague: Who is it? Its me. Lunch, remember? Oh, yes! Youd better come next week. Im afraid Ive been rather a naughty girl. Never mind. Come next week.

When I finally arrived the following week Melita came to the door positively beaming, looking very relaxed and mischievous. She was wearing a long, tatty, old-fashioned brown woollen mans overcoat. A hat of sorts was perched precariously on her head, and she clutched a knife in one hand and sprouting broccoli in the other. She ushered me into the back room next to the kitchen. It was rather a bare room apart from a large kitchen table, an armchair, a television set and a Utility sideboard. French windows looked out on to what was still an attractive garden. Lying on the kitchen table were copies of the Communist Partys newspaper The Morning Star. At the age of eighty-nine, every Saturday she still delivered thirty-two copies of the paper to friends and supporters of the Party alike. I picked up the one she saved for me and read. The tin kettle on the stove began to whistle, increasing in shrillness as she reached down the two Che Guevara mugs she used for serving up Co-op tea. She shuffled back into the room, put the mugs down unsteadily and began. I asked her if I could record the interview but she said that shed rather I didnt, but that I could take notes if I liked. It was a strange interview. It was obvious that she was still in a state of shock, and her eccentric, mischievous manner was her way of coping. I just listened. I hadnt prepared any questions, and so I just let her talk, jotting down notes as quickly as I could. All the names from Russian espionage that we had spoken about on previous occasions now entered the drama in a different capacity. It was fascinating: as she spoke she became more animated, younger even, the mischievous woman that she once was, her confidence regained. When I left she told me I was to come back in a couple of weeks.