How a hot water bottle helped a chilly Mrs T to thaw the Cold War
Secrets & Spies: A Nuclear Game (BBC2)
THIS was the story John le Carré never told, how the West averted war with the Soviet Union thanks to two secret weapons — Nancy reagan’s astrologer and Mrs Thatcher’s trusty hot water bottle.
What a pity the grandmaster of espionage novels didn’t get a chance to write it. He could have called it The Psychic Who Stayed Out Of The Cold.
The intriguing and lively Secrets & Spies: A Nuclear Game revealed that a radioactive holocaust was averted in the 1980s when President ronald reagan began signalling to the Kremlin that Washington wanted a lasting peace.
A British intelligence source at the heart of the KGB had delivered a warning: the USSr’s paranoid, superannuated political leaders feared America was preparing for war. They were poised to over-react to any provocation.
reagan’s security services didn’t know how the UK was getting its intel, but the President and his wife decided to trust it, and launched a charm offensive . . . guided by the star charts of celebrity astrologer Joan Quigley, whom they regularly consulted during their time in the White House.
The planets must have been in perfect alignment, because reagan’s folksy speech — about an American couple, Jim and Sally, who befriend russian lovebirds Ivan and Anya at the bus stop — struck the right note in Moscow.
Shortly after that, Maggie was invited to attend the funeral in 1985 of Politburo chief Konstantin Chernenko. But the ceremonial procession through red Square threatened to inflict frostbite on visiting dignitaries.
‘What we were mainly concerned with,’ revealed lord Butler, the PM’s Private Secretary, ‘was how Margaret Thatcher was going to keep warm. We concealed a hot water bottle under her clothes.’
BBC archive footage of Mrs T is usually chosen to depict her in messianic mode at party conference, the picture tilted to imply an unbalanced mind. But here we glimpsed her behind the scenes in downing Street, overseeing flower arrangements for a state banquet in honour of Mikhail Gorbachev, Chernenko’s successor — and a man, according to our secret source, who was ready to strike a deal to end the arms race.
That double agent was Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB’s head of station in london. Now 85, he did not appear on camera, no doubt because he doesn’t fancy a pot of Vladimir Putin’s radioactive tea, but his voice was heard on tape — sounding so much like a stereotypical russian spy that the next Bond director would probably reject him as too close to parody.
every one of the former spooks, codebreakers and analysts interviewed seemed thrilled at their own role in a real-life spy thriller. former foreign Secretary Malcolm rifkind studied the photo of Maggie, Mikhail and assorted ministers outside No. 10 and said, ‘That’s me in the background. It was an incredible experience.’
He turned his gaze to Mrs Thatcher: ‘Three quarters of the time, I could have followed her to the ends of the earth. The other quarter, I could have . . . been less complimentary.’
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