An Irishman, a KGB spy, and a great escape

Sean Bourke broke out ‘traitor’ George Blake from prison in 1966, enabling him to flee to Moscow, says Richard Fitzpatrick

SEÁN BOURKE and George Blake were an odd couple. They were prison mates in Wormwood Scrubs.

In 1961, Blake was ‘sent down’ for being a KGB spy. He was a cool cat. “George was very self-contained. He did yoga,” says Michael Randle, who was in prison with him, serving a year for anti-nuclear campaigning. “He was in for 42 years, the longest sentence in British penal history. You couldn’t imagine what that was like. It was like a death sentence. Whenever a young prisoner complained about being in for four or five years, the screws would point over at George and say, ‘See ’im, he’s doing 42 years. Do your bird like he’s doing his bird’.”