Chapter 21: Olga Pulloffski

1  ‘I was approached’: History Sheet, 25 January, 1938, KV 2/1022.

2  ‘No official or other’: KV 4/227/1a.

3  ‘was too much’: Ibid.

4  ‘The work was’: History Sheet, 25 January, 1938, KV 2/1022.

5  ‘stitching reports into’: Macpherson, ‘Olga the Beautiful Spy’.

6  ‘most valuable information’: KV 4/227/1a.

7  ‘explained how the cipher’: Nigel West, Mask (London: Routledge, 2005), 21.

8  ‘an honest Communist’: Macpherson, ‘Olga the Beautiful Spy’.

9  ‘was a very nice man’: Masters, Man Who Was M, 35.

10  ‘had been sleeping’: Ted Crawford footnote in Harry Wicks, An Unpublished Chapter from Harry Wicks’s Autobiography, ed. Ted Crawford, http://www.cix.co.uk/~jplant/revhist/supplem/wicksind.htm.

11  ‘It is important to stress’: KV 4/227/1a.

12  ‘A clever woman’: Ibid.

13  ‘She’s Olga Pulloffski’: Written by Bert Lee and R. P. Weston. Lyrics accessed at http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/o/olgapulloffskithebeautifulspy.shtml on 10 September, 2012, and transcribed by Mark MacNamara in November 2003.

14  ‘Some “superior” people’: Knight, Taming and Handling Animals, 53.

15  ‘looking over your shoulder’: Valerie Lippay, telephone interview with author, May 2014.

16  ‘he was told’: Sean Rayment, ‘Traumatised MI5 Spy Fights Murder Verdict’, Sunday Times, 13 March, 2016.

17  ‘I informed the officer’: History Sheet, 25 January, 1938, KV 2/1022.

18  ‘As may be’: KV 4/227/1a.

19  ‘in an agent context’: Roberts to Harry, 10 February, 1969, Eric Roberts Papers.

20  ‘On instructions’: History Sheet, 25 January, 1938, KV 2/1022.