Radio Drama - Breaking Blake by Barnaby Kay
Breaking Blake opens in October 1966 with a memorable football match - England against Northern Ireland - and a prison breakout. George Blake (Michael Maloney), a Russian spy, has just escaped from Wormwood Scrubs. It was initially assumed that the KGB had masterminded his escape, but Barnaby Kay’s gripping drama explores what really happened. In 1961, two anti-nuclear campaigners, Michael Randle (Elliot Levey) and Pat Pottle (Tony Gardner), were imprisoned after entering a US air force base in Essex. They were charged under the official secret acts - for attempting to stop nuclear weapons being loaded onto a plane - and received 18-month sentences. In Wormwood Scrubs they met Blake, a member of MI6 who had passed secrets to the Russians - considered a terrible betrayal. He was sentenced to an unprecedented term of 42-years. Many fellow inmates believed Blake’s punishment to be unduly harsh and in 1966 he was sprung from prison. The leader was an Irish petty criminal, Sean Bourke