Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Unfinished business
Simon Gray's play on Soviet double agent George Blake is disappointingly incomplete, says LYNNE WALSH

Cell Mates                            
Hampstead Theatre, London

HERE'S a jigsaw piece in the story of 95-year-old former MI6 officer George Blake, now living in a dacha close to Moscow, who recently gave interviews saying that he held fast to his communist beliefs and remained optimistic.

Double agent Blake, sentenced five years earlier  to 42 years in prison,  was helped in his “comic-book” escape from Wormwood Scrubs to the Soviet Union in 1966 by petty criminal Sean Bourke.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
lttmust
Features / 11 August 2025
11 August 2025

LYNNE WALSH reports from the Women’s Declaration International conference on feminist struggles from Britain to the Far East

Caroline Darian / Pic: Olivier Roller
Features / 6 June 2025
6 June 2025

Caroline Darian, daughter of Gisele Pelicot, took part in a conversation with Afua Hirsch at London’s Royal Geographical Society. LYNNE WALSH reports 

Demonstrators during an anti-racism protest organised by Sta
Antifascism / 7 May 2025
7 May 2025

This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH 

Lynne Walsh piece webpic.jpg
Features / 22 April 2025
22 April 2025

LYNNE WALSH previews the Bristol Radical History Conference this weekend

Similar stories
deal
Theatre review / 14 May 2025
14 May 2025

In this production of David Mamet’s play, MARY CONWAY misses the essence of cruelty that is at the heart of the American deal

UN-NUANCED: Sophie Melville, Leander Deeny, Laura Whitmore i
Theatre Review / 6 April 2025
6 April 2025
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by characters so un-nuanced as to be unreal, a stereotypical plot and a conceptual vampire
NO THRILLS: East is South at Hampstead Theatre
Theatre review / 19 February 2025
19 February 2025
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a play about AI that results in a deadening disconnect for its audience
(L) Playwright Richard Bean; (R) John Hollingworth as Donald
Interview / 5 November 2024
5 November 2024
MAYER WAKEFIELD speaks to playwright Richard Bean about his new play Reykjavik that depicts the exploitation of the Hull-based “far-fleet” trawlermen