“Rampages of betrayal” – Former ITN Editor Stewart Purvis’s Updated Version of The Hampstead Spies Walk

The quotation is from the great espionage novelist John le Carré’s Smiley’s People. John le Carré lived in Hampstead, just a couple of streets away from where George Blake, the spy who stayed out in cold, holed up. That connection – that episode – is part of what former ITN Editor and CEO Stewart Purvis has uncovered in his ever-deepening investigation into the spies and counterspies of NW3 (Hampstead)  and needless to say it figures in the updated version of his The Spies of Hampstead Walk. In this podcast Stewart talks about what (and who) he’s tracked down this past year – and how it’s simultaneously beefed up and sharpened his Hampstead Spies Walk. 

The Hampstead Spies Walk takes place at 10.45 am on the last Sunday of every month. The meeting point is Belsize Park Underground Station.

“a night-time journey of the soul”
― John le Carré, A Legacy of Spies

“there was no future: there was only a continued slide into still more terrifying versions of the present.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy