Posted by Owen Roberts on August 14, 2009 at 02:00:52 user OwenRoberts.
In Reply to: ... and on Newsnight too posted by Robert Hill on August 13, 2009 at 21:37:48:
This was the last item on Newsnight and can be seen on the BBC IPlayer , 13th August edition.
For those unable to access IPlayer, it was a report by Matt Prodger on the conclusions that might be draw from Roland Chambers’ new book.
There was an interview with Roland Chambers, who stated the AR was a double agent and a bigamist. I am surprised about the bigamy, as I had understood that although AR took up with Evgenia whilst still married to Ivy, I thought that he had divorced Ivy before he married Evgenia.
A further interview with Philip Knightly, the journalist and non fiction author, who the BBC often uses for comment on espionage. His view was that many journalists have links with MI6 and journalism is often used as good cover for spying.
The interviews were interspersed with well known still shots from the Brotherton Collection and clips from the SA movie film.
Roland Chambers did not seem to state that AR was a traitor and did not deal with the idea that AR might have been used as a tool to introduce Evgenia as a spy to England.
I have wondered whether Evgenia was a spy. Coniston was not far from the shipyards at Barrow. There was seaplane development on Windermere including Oscar Gnosspelius (the person upon whom Squashy Hat was based). Then a move to Pin Mill with the possibility of reporting on the Naval Training installation at Shotley – or recruiting spies there – or reporting on shipping at Harwich in the wartime.