Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky was a colonel of the KGB who became KGB resident-designate (rezident) and bureau chief in London. Gordievsky was a double agent, providing information to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1974 to 1985. After being recalled to Moscow under suspicion, he was exfiltrated from the Soviet Union in July 1985 under a plan code-named Operation Pimlico. The Soviet Union subsequently sentenced him to death in absentia.
Roger Hermiston was until recently Assistant Editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He began his journalistic career on weekly papers in Kent and Yorkshire, before becoming Crime Reporter on the daily Sunderland Echo. He then spent three years as reporter and feature writer on the Yorkshire Post, before joining the BBC in the early 1990s. On Today – among other things – he covered general elections at home, American presidential campaigns, war in Kosovo and civil war in Algeria. He was a member of the team that won a number of Sony Radio Awards for Best Programme. He lives in Suffolk and is a season-ticket holder at Ipswich Town FC.
