Tales of espionage in four ports: Portsmouth, Portland, Porthmadog, Portmeirion. Part 2.

So many connections in what's perceived by some as a quiet corner, away from the 'mainstream'. You'd be surprised. Some have asked why we moved to “the edge”.  But looking at the totality of the British and Irish islands, you could hardly get to a more central point. And likewise for tales of intrigue and espionage. What follows are just a few examples. There have been spies hiding in clear sight around Porthmadog and Portmeirion. 

Coed Y Bleiddiau ('Wood of the Wolves') is a trackside cottage on the Ffestiniog Railway. Now a holiday home, as it was when owned by composer Sir Granville Bantock, a friend of Harry ('Jack') St John Philby, Arabist, explorer, author and intelligence officer, who worked for the Civil Service in the Middle East in the 1920s. In 1933 Philby took over the lease, and his family rented the house until 1947. His son, Harold ‘Kim’ Philby, became one of the 'Cambridge Five' of Russian double agents. 

In Porthmadog, printing firm Gwasg Eryri was sold by a Pat Pottle in the early 70s.  Mr Pottle was one of the 'Lavender Hill Mob' who sprang convicted Soviet spy George Blake from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966. Pottle was secretary to Nobel Prize winner Bertrand Russell who had retired to nearby Minffordd, on a hill behind Portmeirion. Mr Pottle (d. 2000) was a member of the pacifist and anti-nuclear movement during the Cold War. He worked for the Committee of 100, an anti-war group set up in 1960 by Russell, who wanted more militancy than CND, advocating civil disobedience. Pottle took part in demonstrations including those against US involvement in Vietnam and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He had also been a frequent visitor to artist and fellow peace activist Tom Kinsey in nearby Cwm Croesor  [Incidentally Bertrand Russell was famously in correspondence with Nikita Kruschev a few years after the latter's goodwill visit to Portsmouth Dockyard on the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze: see Part 1.

George Blake's escape from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 was first blamed on the KGB. 25 years later, Pottle and a Michael Randle were put on trial. They had met Blake at the Scrubs in 1961, while serving 18 months for breaking the Official Secrets Act with a sit-in at an Essex US Airforce base. Three years later, Pottle and Randle, and another, 'sprang' Blake via a rope ladder over the wall of The Scrubs, who was then smuggled abroad in a camper van. In 1987 Pottle and Randle were identified publicly and wrote their version of events in The Blake Escape - How We Freed George Blake and Why. 

In his own defence in the 1991 trial, Pottle said "Yes, I helped George Blake escape. I did so for purely humanitarian reasons. I think we were right to do so. I would do it again. I have no apologies to make and no regrets." He quoted Bertrand Russell: "Remember your humanity and forget the rest”. The jury ignored the judge and acquitted both.  Pottle's widow Susan, who owned the Eisteddfa antiques shop in Harlech, was also a peace campaigner who later joined the London march against the Iraq war. 

Micky Burn (1912-2010) was variously a journalist, commando, writer and poet whose father had been secretary to the Duchy of Cornwall, and whose mother was instrumental in developing the French resort of Le Touquet, He was a friend of Alice Keppel, a mistress of Edward VII. His lovers included Soviet spy Guy Burgess. Twice in the 1930s he took himself to the police to avoid blackmail for the then crime of 'homosexual conduct'. As a later Commando he was imprisoned in Colditz. After the war, working for The Times, he spent time behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary. In the 1950s he and his wife moved to Beudy Gwyn, Minffordd, along the lane to Portmeirion, where they became close friends and neighbours of the Russells. 

Not a spy but an activist, Arthur Koestler had been variously Zionist, anti-Zionist, Communist, anti-Communist, existentialist, mystic. He sought democratic socialism based on justice and compassion. From European coffee houses and the Soviet Union, from London and Dylan Thomas, his search for Utopia brought him and his later wife to Cymru in 1945. They spent three years in Bwlch Ocyn, a cottage owned by Clough Williams-Ellis (builder of  Portmeirion), in Dyffryn Ffestiniog just a few miles away from Porthmadog.  As an intellectual force in the thirties and forties, at his peak, he found a corner of Wales with its own intellectual circle, including Clough’s wife, Amabel, allegedly a one-time communist, and Bertrand Russell, a few miles away. George Orwell stayed for Christmas, where they thrashed out their ideal anti-totalitarian vision of Socialism. 

So much history scarcely below the surface. See the links for more detail.

LINKS

Welsh involvement in the shadowy world of spying - Wales Online

BBC - North West Wales History - Peace activist Pat Pottle

The Untouched Legacy of Arthur Koestler and George Orwell (walesartsreview.org)

Michael Burn obituary | Art and design books |