Stirred Not Shaken Trivia Quiz

Answer: Anthony Blunt

The "Cambridge Spy Ring" consisted of Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Blunt. All were educated at Cambridge University and all worked either for the Foreign Office or British Intelligence. They passed secrets to the Soviets for many years, probably from WWII up to the early 1950s and none of them was ever prosecuted for their crimes. Maclean and Burgess fled UK before they could be questioned in 1951 to a destination unknown, which was revealed as Soviet Union in 1956. Philby, while employed by MI6 and working as a journalist in Middle East, defected to Soviet Union in 1963 and Blunt confessed in 1954 in exchange for immunity from prosecution, Margaret Thatcher revealed his identity in 1979 and this ended Blunt's successful career as an art historian as well as seriously impacting his public life.

He died three years later in London, aged 75.

Answer: Aldrich Ames

Just two years into his spying career, Ames was suspected by co-workers of espionage due to the fact he was living well beyond his means, and although investigated by CIA and FBI, he passed two polygraph tests and was able to continue. By the time of his arrest, he had compromised over 100 CIA agents and caused the execution of at least 10 but he was living in a half million dollar house, driving a luxury Jaguar and had credit cards on which the minimum monthly payment exceeded his monthly salary of $5000.

Answer: Klaus Fuchs

Fuchs was born in Germany and fled to Britain after the rise of the Nazi party. He was granted UK citizenship in 1942 and shortly afterwards began spying for the Soviets. As part of the war effort, he transferred from the British atomic bomb research project, "Tube Alloys", to the joint American, British and Canadian "Manhattan Project" at Los Alamos in 1944. Following the war, he returned to the United Kingdom to work on Britain's post-war nuclear weapons program and following a tip off, was questioned by British intelligence in 1949 about his activities, eventually confessing in early 1950.

He was sentenced to 14 years in prison, of which he served nine and emigrated to East Germany on his release.

Answer: Fritz Duquesne

Duquesne had a hatred of the British and their treatment of Boer children and women which fueled his espionage activities. At his most active during WWII, he ran the Duquesne Spy Ring of over 30 members who were sentenced to serve a total of over 300 years in prison in 1942, an event which delivered "the death blow" to espionage efforts in the United States according to Germany and was hailed by Roosevelt as the greatest spy roundup in U.S. history.

Thanks to the fascinating book "Counterfeit Hero: Fritz Duquesne, Adventurer and Spy" by Art Ronnie.

Answer: Virginia Hall

Hall was an American spy who worked with the French Underground in Vichy France, mapping drop zones for supplies, sourcing safe houses as well as training battalions of Resistance forces to wage guerrilla warfare against the Germans. She lost her left leg below the knee in 1932 when she accidentally shot herself and named the wooden replacement Cuthbert. During her hike over the Pyrenees following the German occupation of southern France in 1942, she sent a message to Special Operations Executive that she was fine, but Cuthbert was giving her trouble and received the reply, "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him."

Thanks to "The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy" by Judith L. Pearson

Answer: Julia Child

Child only joined the OSS because at 6'2", she was too tall for military service in the Women's Army Corps and it would seem to have been a successful choice as the repellent she devised is still in use. She also undertook OSS posts in Ceylon and China and whilst in China she met Paul Child, whom she married.

When his Foreign Service posting took him to Paris, she accompanied him, tasted French food and the rest is history.

Answer: John Le Carre

Le Carre started with British Intelligence while studying German at Bern when he was used to interrogate defectors from the Eastern Bloc, and worked for the agencies from 1952 to 1964, when he left to concentrate full time on his writing after the success of his book "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" which was published in 1963 and was the third book to feature legendary "retired" spy George Smiley.

Answer: Cuba

Montes was arrested just ten days after 9/11 when national security was of paramount importance. She had been recruited by Cuba in 1984 when she was a clerk at the Department of Justice in Washington, and by the time she started work at DIA in 1985, was a fully fledged spy.

The FBI had her in their sights for some time and were hoping to arrest her and her Cuban handler, but 9/11 happened before such a meet was organised and the fact that she would be privy to USA war plans meant her arrest was brought forward.

Interestingly, she acted on moral not monetary grounds, receiving no payment from Cuba, instead citing her view that "the Cubans were treated unfairly by the U.S. government."

Answer: Bernard Boursicot

Bernard Boursicot was posted to the French embassy in Beijing in 1964 when he met Pu, who told him that he was a woman dressed as a man to appease his father. They always made love in the dark, and Boursicot denied ever suspecting that Pu was a man. When authorities discovered their affair they forced Boursicot to hand over French secrets and this practice continued as did the affair with Pu after his transfer to the embassy in Mongolia. Maybe Pu's case was made stronger by the fact he presented Boursicot with a child he had fathered and Pu had given birth to, although in reality the child had been bought from a doctor in Xinjiang province. Both men were convicted of espionage in 1986 and sentenced to six years' imprisonment.Pu died in 2009 and Boursicot is living in Paris with his son.

Answer: Canadian

Yep, the real version of the world's most famous ultra smooth, super suave spy was not British, but Canadian. Stephenson, from Winnipeg, Manitoba, was appointed by Winston Churchill to the fictitious post of British Passport Control Officer in New York in 1940, with the remit of covertly establishing and running the British Security Coordination to garner support in the US for the British war effort, train US and Canadian agents, crack codes, and gather intelligence.

He also founded the top secret Special Training School No. 103, aka Camp X in Whitby, Ontario, which trained agents in the methods required for success in clandestine operations. For his services during the war he was made a Knight Bachelor by King George VI, became the first non-American to receive Medal for Merit and was was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.