Hampstead Spies – Philby & Comrades

Belsize Park tube station, London

Guided by Stewart Purvis CBE

Adult: £20 · Students & Seniors: £15 · Children: £5

Walk Times

Day	Walk Type	Start Time	End Time
11 May 2025	Special	10.45 am	12.45 pm	Summer
14 June 2025	Special	10.45 am	12.45 pm	Summer	Reserve Online

THE KGB IN NW3

We now have two walks under the banner of ‘Hampstead Spies’ about what Soviet intelligence got up to in the Hampstead area. This walk ‘Philby and Comrades’ is about how in the 1930s four local residents launched what became known as the ‘Cambridge Five’ spy ring with a branch office in Oxford. Details of the other walk ‘Atomic Secrets’ are here.

IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THE GUIDING

“My information mostly comes from MI5 files of the period”

SITREP

This sitrep was filed by London Walks’ “intelligence gatherer” himself, the distinguished newsman Stewart Purvis CBE. Writing in the third person, Stewart says, “Thousands of pages of MI5 files are clogging up Stewart Purvis’s computer as he pursues a strange ambition; to work out how many KGB spies and helpers lived in the Borough of Hampstead between the 1930s and 1960s. So far, Stewart, a former Editor of ITN and Ofcom regulator, has found a dozen and he’s still counting. He’s even got all their names and addresses and has turned his research into an updated guided walk around the spy homes of NW3.  The route is in chronological order so step by step and stop by stop he can reveal the previously untold story of the Hampstead connection with the famous Cambridge Five Spies and their lesser-known brethren the Oxford Spies.

Action Now Sitrep

“New files from MI5 reveal even more about the KGB in NW3 so there’s a new route around spy homes.”  Stewart Purvis CBE

Guided by spy author and broadcaster Stewart Purvis CBE.

Some broadcaster. Stewart Purvis was the eagle in the nest at Independent Television News. He was the Editor at ITN and ultimately the CEO. As an American friend who knows this country well and had read Stewart’s book put it to me, “you got Stewart Purvis to guide Hampstead Spies for London Walks! That’s like getting Dan Rather to guide Dealey Plaza.”

GLAD TO HEAR IT

Meet your guide – here’s a little podcast Stewart did about his Hampstead Spies tour

And here’s another ‘un

WATCH THE VIDEO

The video is a short extract from the recent BBC Four Storyville production Toffs, Queers & Traitors – The Extraordinary Life of Guy Burgess. Stewart Purvis – who created and guides the Spies of Hampstead walk – had a major role in the programme.

Short read: The KGB in NW3

Sitrep Backgrounder 

There were once so many KGB agents in Hampstead that members of rival sections of Soviet intelligence lived just a few doors apart. Distinguished UK Newsman, spy author and broadcaster Stewart Purvis has worked out from MI5  files who lived where in the 1930s and the links between them. In October 2022 and January 2025 the UK’s spy-catchers, the Security Service known as MI5, did giant dumps of previously secret files into the National Archives. There were hundreds more documents about the KGB agents and helpers Stewart has been tracking for a decade. So he’s constantly updating the route and the talking points.  The best-known spy was West Hampstead’s own Kim Philby, “the greatest unhanged scoundrel in modern British history” (Anthony Cave Brown). Stewart’s latest route reveals how the KGB plan to recruit him and the other ‘Cambridge Five’ spies was born in Belsize Park. The route ends with the story of the woman Oxford graduate who was targeted for recruitment by the KGB in Hampstead Village. Along the way there is a visit to Hampstead’s ‘secret garden’ and stops for the Hampstead writers who knew a thing or two about spies: John Le Carre, Ian Fleming and George Orwell. But the real thing is better than any spy thriller. The tour starts at Belsize Park tube station and ends at Hampstead tube station. At the end of the walk there’s a chance to buy the booklet ‘the Summer Camp Spies’ which Stewart has written with a colleague about the Oxford spies. The Sunday Times ran a major article about it and here’s a quick podcast about it.

The walk is guided by Stewart Purvis co-author of Guy Burgess, The Spy Who Knew Everyone, which the New York Review of Books called “an excellent read”. Stewart and the walk were featured in the BBC TV spy documentary ‘Toffs, Queers and Traitors’.

“For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.” – Hampstead resident John le Carre

But the real thing is better than any spy thriller. The walk is guided by Stewart Purvis co-author of Guy Burgess, The Spy Who Knew Everyone, which the New York Review of Books called “an excellent read”. Stewart and the walk were featured in a BBC TV spy documentary ‘Toffs, Queers and Traitors’ in November 2017.

THE SPIES OF HAMPSTEAD – THE PRACTICALS

To go on the walk meet Stewart just outside the exit of Belsize Park Tube

MORE VIDEO

Here’s Stewart giving a quick preview of the walk.