George Blake, born George Behar, escaped Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1966 and fled to the Soviet Union where he lived until his death today

Notorious British traitor George Blake has died, the Russian foreign intelligence announced today.
The 98-year-old spy had been living in Moscow since he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966.
Blake was sentenced to a record 42-year jail sentence in London in 1961 for spilling MI6 secrets to the Soviet Union, sending dozens of Western agents to their deaths.
“The bitter news has come – the legendary George Blake is gone, said Sergey Ivanov, spokesman for the SVR foreign intelligence agency, formerly the KGB.
“He died of old age, his heart stopped.
Blake, born in Rotterdam, was a British spy who worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
George Blake was a double agent and secretly worked for the KGB (Image: Getty Images)
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He became a Communist and decided to work for the KGB while a prisoner during the Korean War.
Blake’s betrayal was discovered in 1961 and he was arrested when he arrived in London after being summoned from Lebanon.  
He gave his MI6 interrogators a full confession and was sentenced to 42 years imprisonment.
Five years into his sentence, in 1966, Blake escaped with the help of three men he had met behind bars.
He was smuggled across the English Channel in a camper van which was then driven across northern Europe and into east Germany, where he met his handlers and completed his escape to the Soviet Union.
A mugshot of Blake issued by Scotland Yard after his escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison in October 1966 (Image: Getty)
In 2012, he celebrated his 90th birthday, still living in Moscow on a KGB pension. His eyesight was failing and he claimed to be “virtually blind”. 
At his death he was the oldest KGB veteran.
Visually impaired, he continued to spy on Britain by tuning into BBC radio, said friends.
The British traitor had been holed up at his dacha – country house – near Moscow which was a gift of the KGB amid efforts to keep him safe from coronavirus.
Despite being a fugitive from justice in Britain since 1966, he kept in contact with the three sons he deserted when he fled to Moscow.
Dutch-born Blake was awarded with the Order of Lenin and Order of the Red Banner (Image: E2W)
Earlier this year Ivanov had said: “George Blake walks a lot in the fresh air, listens to his favourite classical music, regularly communicates with relatives and friends on the phone, and consults his physicians remotely
The SVR is in constant remote contact with him and his relatives, and provides health monitoring for this honoured person.
In Soviet times, Dutch-born Blake was awarded with the Order of Lenin and Order of the Red Banner.
Blake broke out of Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1966, shortly after England won the World Cup (Image: east2west news)
Rossiyskaya Gazeta said his latest honour from Moscow was as patriarch of Russian foreign intelligence.
In Russian he was known as Colonel Georgiy Ivanovich Bleyk.
To the end Blake insisted he had “no regrets” and showed no remorse.
He was eulogised in an official portrait.