Posted by Peter H on March 03, 2005 at 17:31:48 from 81.158.214.223 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Ransome & the British Secret Services posted by andyb on March 03, 2005 at 14:35:06:
The tricky question of whether Mrs Bolger is/was a KGB agent does not, I submit, have to be answered. I think we are getting a bit too tied down to classifications here. When I put forward the idea that Mr and Mrs R were moving house too often for comfort, it wasn't AR I was thinking of, but Evgenia. Bearing in mind who she was, and the circumstances in which she left Russia for good, it is surely possible that she was on someone's 'black list'? As in all revolutions, there were splinter dissident groupings. Old scores might remain to be settled here and there.
I am grateful to Jeremy Kriewaldt for the link to John Berry's memoirs. JB describes how, in August 1962, aged 78, AR fired at targets in the garden at the Heald with a .22 rifle. He had a firearm certificate for this, and possession of such a weapon would not have been remarkable at that time for anyone living in the country - it could be used for rabbits, rats etc. Not quite the same as a constantly loaded handgun. I'll have to check further on that one.
How do I know I am not a KGB agent? Well, if I am, now there's a 'hidden agenda' for you.