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- In 2000, Joan (Judi Dench) is arrested and charged with espionage. She is interrogated by two detectives from Scotland Yard, whom she accuses of misunderstanding her life, but gradually concedes that she did provide information to the Soviets. The tabloid press goes into a "feeding frenzy" and vilifies her as a traitor, calling her "Red Joan".
www.imdb.com/title/tt7615302/plotsummary/
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Apr 19, 2019 · Standing in her suburban front garden in 87-year-old pensioner Melita Norwood read from a crisp sheet of paper, intently looking down the lens of a camera as she confessed to being a top secret ...
- Jo-Anne Rowney
- Overview
- HISTORY Vault: Great Spy Stories of the 20th Century
Melita Norwood was a great-grandmother when her espionage was finally revealed.
In 1999, an 87-year-old British woman held a press conference in front of her home to announce that for nearly four decades, she’d worked as a spy for the Soviet Union.
In fact, Melita Norwood was the Soviet Union’s longest-serving British spy. From World War II through the Cold War, she stole nuclear secrets from the office where she worked as a secretary and passed them to Moscow.
Norwood was coming clean because a Cambridge historian had discovered her espionage while writing a book, but she was unrepentant. She told The Times of London that “in the same circumstances, I know that I would do the same thing again.”
Norwood was a long-time member of the Communist Party who supported the Soviet Union’s attempt to bring communism to Eastern Europe and feared a world in which the United States and Western Europe held unchallenged nuclear power. She began her spying career in the 1930s while working as a secretary for the Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in London.
This innocuous-sounding association was actually part of a secret nuclear weapons research project with the U.S. called “Tube Alloy.” When no one was looking, Norwood would sneak into her boss’ office, open his safe and take pictures of the secret documents inside. She’d then pass the camera off to her contact in the KGB, who knew her by her code name “Hola.”
Delve into celebrated espionage cases of the 20th century involving spies, moles, dead drops, disguises, gadgets and more.
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In 1996, the government decided that the information in the Mitrokhin papers should be available to the public, and handed them over to the Cambridge professor Christopher Andrew so he could write a book about them. Norwood’s secret finally came out in September 1999, when The Times of London began to publish Andrew’s book serially.
The revelations came as a total surprise to Norwood's daughter, Anita Ferguson, who didn’t find out her mother was a spy until she read about it in the paper. As the news of Norwood’s espionage broke in The Times, Norwood held a press conference to confirm that she was a spy and explain why she’d done it.
Melita Norwood, pictured here at age 87 in 1999, standing outside her home in Bexleyheath, where she reads a statement to the press concerning her involvement in passing over atomic secrets to the KGB.
“I did what I did not to make money but to help prevent the defeat of a new system which had, at great cost, given ordinary people food and fares which they could afford, a good education and a health service,” she told the press in front of her home. “I thought perhaps what I had access to might be useful in helping Russia to keep abreast of Britain, America and Germany.” She added that, “in general, I do not agree with spying against one's country.”
- Becky Little
Apr 18, 2019 · Red Joan was the fictitious name for real-life Englishwoman Melita Norwood who sold British secrets to the Soviets in the 1930s
Apr 28, 2019 · Joan ends up working at a top secret nuclear research facility, where she encounters an ethical dilemma: will she betray her country and loved ones, if it means saving them?
Aug 28, 2019 · The reality saw 87-year-old Norwood in her front garden in London facing the world's media after it was revealed she was a spy - four decades after she used her job at the British Non-Ferrous...
- Jo-Anne Rowney
Jul 3, 2024 · Following the story of Joan Stanley, a Cambridge science graduate who stole British nuclear secrets and passed them to the Soviet Union after WWII.
Apr 17, 2019 · Quiet retiree Joan Stanley (Judi Dench) is suddenly arrested in her quiet English town.. The charges? High treason. They claim she handed British secrets on atomic weaponry over to the Soviet...
