Superspies

Irina and I are watching The Crown and keep checking which parts really happened. That led us to Anthony Blunt, the keeper of the royal paintings who had been a Soviet agent. And from him to other famous stories of espionage.

Anthony Blunt: keeper of the royal paintings

Blunt was a respected art historian. During the Second World War, he served in Britain's counterintelligence service, MI5, and passed secret information to the Soviet Union. After the war, he became keeper of the royal paintings. He was one of the Cambridge Five, a group of Cambridge graduates recruited by Soviet intelligence in the 1930s.

In 1964, Blunt confessed to spying in exchange for a promise that he would not be prosecuted. The story was kept secret, and he continued working with the Royal Collection. He was not publicly exposed until 1979. One revealing detail in the declassified records: Elizabeth II herself was told about his past in 1973. Her private secretary had known since 1964.

Kim Philby: a Soviet agent inside MI6

Another member of the Five, Kim Philby, built a career in Britain's foreign intelligence service, MI6. At one point, he was put in charge of a section responsible for countering Soviet espionage. By then, Philby himself had been working for the Soviet Union for years. He later became a liaison officer with the CIA and FBI in Washington, gaining access to American secrets too.

He came under suspicion in 1951, after two other members of the Five fled. But it was not until 1963 that he confessed. Soon afterwards, Philby escaped to the Soviet Union and spent the rest of his life in Moscow.

Garbo: a network of imaginary agents

The Spaniard Juan Pujol García convinced German intelligence that he was working for them in Britain. In reality, he was in Lisbon, making up reports with the help of guidebooks and reference books.

He was later brought to London. Together with MI5 officer Tomás Harris, he created a network of 27 imaginary agents, complete with biographies, jobs and personal problems. Under the codename Garbo, Pujol took part in an operation that persuaded the Germans to expect the main Allied landing in the Pas-de-Calais. He continued feeding them that story even after the landings in Normandy had begun.

The Germans awarded him the Iron Cross; the British made him a Member of the Order of the British Empire. After the war, he settled in Venezuela.

Klaus Fuchs: a physicist with access to the atomic bomb

Fuchs fled Nazi Germany for Britain and worked first on the British atomic weapons programme, then on the American one. At Los Alamos, he helped develop the bomb as a physicist while passing information about its design to the Soviet Union.

The decryption of Soviet messages through the Venona project helped investigators identify him. But using those intercepts in court would have exposed the programme itself. After a series of interviews with an MI5 officer, Fuchs confessed. In 1950, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison. After serving nine, he moved to East Germany and continued his work as a physicist.

Oleg Gordievsky: escape from the Soviet Union

Gordievsky served in the KGB and secretly worked with Britain's MI6 from the 1970s. He rose to become head of the Soviet intelligence station in London while passing information about its operations to the British.

In 1985, he came under suspicion, was recalled to Moscow and interrogated. MI6 arranged his escape using a plan prepared in advance. Gordievsky was driven across the border into Finland, hidden in the boot of a car. He was sentenced to death in absentia in the Soviet Union and spent the rest of his life in Britain.

Ames and Hanssen: leaks inside the CIA and FBI

Aldrich Ames worked for the CIA and knew Soviet officials who were secretly cooperating with the Americans. In 1985, he offered his services to the KGB for money. The information he passed on led to the arrest and execution of American intelligence sources. One clue in the investigation was his wealth, which did not match his salary. In 1994, Ames was arrested and sentenced to life in prison.

The search for leaks continued after his arrest. Another source turned out to be Robert Hanssen, an FBI counterintelligence officer. He passed information about agents, investigations and technical operations to the Soviet Union and later to Russia. Documents obtained from Russian intelligence helped investigators identify him. In 2001, Hanssen was arrested after leaving a package of classified material at a dead drop beneath a footbridge. He too received a life sentence.

Ana Belén Montes: secrets from memory

Montes was one of US military intelligence's leading specialists on Cuba, while also working for Cuban intelligence. She had been recruited before she joined the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency.

She did not take classified documents out of the office. Instead, she memorised information at work and wrote it down at home. She received instructions over shortwave radio. She accepted no payment for the information, apart from reimbursement for some expenses. A colleague's suspicions eventually helped set an investigation in motion. She was arrested in 2001 and sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2002.

Eli Cohen: a false identity in Damascus

Israeli intelligence agent Eli Cohen posed as a wealthy Syrian businessman who had lived in Argentina. To establish this identity, he travelled to Buenos Aires and made contacts in the Syrian community. In 1962, he moved to Damascus.

Cohen became close to military officers and officials, gathered information about the Syrian army and politics, and sent it to Israel. His access to information depended on personal connections and trust. In January 1965, he was exposed and arrested. After a trial, he was executed in Damascus in May that year.

He is the man Sacha Baron Cohen portrayed in the miniseries The Spy.