Posted by Robin Selby on December 01, 2018 at 09:13:21 user RobinSelby.
In Reply to: Re: The secret life of the GA posted by wdmtgts on November 30, 2018 at 14:29:21:
I have been toying with the idea that the GA went to school at Great Marlow and then to Newnham College at Cambridge. So far as I am aware there is no documentation to support this, simply the idea that when Ransome needed a school and a college for Miss Lee, he took the ones nearest to hand, viz those which the GA actually attended.
This theory explains why her nephew Jim went to Oxford rather than Cambridge, as a reaction against the GA. He must have been a source of great anxiety and self-reproach to the GA in his rackety earlier years.
Adam Quinan is quite right to draw attention to Cook. She bears the classic signs of a highly trained and experienced operative working under deep cover. Her name is clearly based on the village of Braithwaite to the west of Keswick, in an attempt to give her local colour.
We can draw reasonable conclusions about her role and spymaster. Lenin may have embedded her in the local community to foment insurgency in a politically sensitive area which could easily trigger revolution in the rest of the country. Her secondary role would be to maintain surveillance on Ransome and Evgenia. Evgenia had been Trotsky’s secretary, and after Trotsky was exiled in 1929, it was clearly imperative for the Soviets to ensure that she was not collaborating with Trotsky.
Or it may be that the GA maintained her association with Naval Intelligence after the war, to the extent that a Foreign Power wanted to keep her under close observation. This implies that she was a very high value asset, because a similar watch would have been necessary on her Harrogate establishment.
Finally, it is possible that there is more to Mrs Blackett than meets the eye. With a respectable and respected position in society, Mrs Blackett was ideally placed to gather vital intelligence on the Vickers ship building site at Barrow on behalf of a Foreign Power. This enables us to reinterpret Jim Turners’s role. He clearly acted as a courier for his sister, under the perfect cover of a restless quest for gold. In this case it is probable that Cook was working for MI5.
Post a followup (Only if you agree to the Terms and Conditions)