43 min listen
The scandalous case of John Vassall
The scandalous case of John Vassall
ratings:
Length:
66 minutes
Released:
May 23, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
In 1962, while working as a clerk in the British Embassy in Moscow, homosexual civil servant John Vassall was caught in a ‘honey trap’ sprung by the Soviet Secret Service. He was blackmailed into passing secrets to the Soviet Union and as a result sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment for espionage.
Our contemporary records specialist Mark Dunton delves deeper into this scandal – one of a series that rocked the Macmillan government in the early 1960s, feeding into a national obsession with spy culture at the time.
This podcast was recorded as part of The National Archives’ Cold War season, a programme of events to coincide with the exhibition, ‘Protect and Survive: Britain’s Cold War Revealed’.
Our contemporary records specialist Mark Dunton delves deeper into this scandal – one of a series that rocked the Macmillan government in the early 1960s, feeding into a national obsession with spy culture at the time.
This podcast was recorded as part of The National Archives’ Cold War season, a programme of events to coincide with the exhibition, ‘Protect and Survive: Britain’s Cold War Revealed’.
Released:
May 23, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
The problem of the poor: faith, science and poverty in 19th century Britain: Dr. John Shaw discusses Victorian attitudes to the poor and how they developed over the 19th century. As the Church tried to decide whether charity was the solution or part of the problem, Victorian science afraid of 'degeneration' in Britain began to sug by The National Archives Podcast Series