Both her parents were pacifists and protested against the First World War. Her father died the day after Armistice Day of TB when Letty was six years old - an event that left its mark: she kept photographs of herself and her father throughout her life and romanticised his revolutionary socialism. Sasha's slogan was "Down with everything that's up and up with everything that's down!", she told me. It was an idyllic childhood set in the leafy lanes of Hampshire. Letty Norwood was the last of those spies.She was born Melita Sirnis in 1912, at Pokesdown on the outskirts of Bournemouth, to a Latvian father, Alexander ("Sasha") Sirnis, and an English mother, Gertrude Stedman, and brought up in a community of exiled Russian Tolstoyans, among them two of Tolstoy's grandchildren. The contribution of Britain's atom bomb spies, Klaus Fuchs, Ted Hall and Allan Nunn May had greatly reduced the time-scale for a Russian atomic bomb. US intelligence at the end of the war predicted that it would take between five and ten years for the Soviet Union to develop a bomb In fact it took them four.
A rather demure, quiet person, she worked as a secretary at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association throughout this period and passed on information critical to the Soviet Union's nuclear reactor programme. Without the information supplied by Norwood the Soviets would not have been in a position to develop a reactor and test an atomic bomb as early as they did. When the Second World War ended, the United States was in the sole possession of the atomic bomb. Letty Norwood first came to the world's attention on 11 September 1999 when The Times newspaper exposed her as the longest-serving female spy in British history. Recruited to the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB in 1934, she spied successfully for the Soviets until 1973. His novel Victims (1976), well received in Britain, had been banned in South Africa, where it reappeared to critical acclaim in 2000 as Hate No More. His post-apartheid play, Hang On In There, Nelson, was performed in the State Theatre, Pretoria, in 1996.
He was working on an account of his return to a changed South Africa after nearly half a century in exile.Randolph Vigne. From 1994 to 1997 he served as managing editor of the Johannesburg Star, and also became a columnist on the Sunday Independent.The Maimanes came back to England in 2000, Arthur to work as a media consultant and to pursue his ambitions as a creative writer. Melita Sirnis, spy: born Pokesdown, Hampshire 25 March 1912; married 1934 Hilary Norwood (n?ussbaum, died 1985; one daughter); died 2 June 2005. The photograph of Maimane in Anthony Sampson's book Drum: a venture into the new Africa (1956) - trilby on back of head, cigarette dangling - is an amusing take-off of the Hollywood "newshound" image, but conceals his innate seriousness as a reporter and analyst of the world around him.He returned to the "new South Africa", first for a year with the liberal, fringe Weekly Mail in May 1990, during which he was again "the first black journalist", this time to report on the dismantling of apartheid legislation. As online gaming exploded in popularity, a small number of competitors who were better at writing computer programs than playing poker began to create their own bots to compete on their behalf. When playing online, they sign in manually and then launch their bots to compete against other players. The idea that a machine can be used to defeat players online is terrible PR for them,'' says Crispin Nieboer, head of the Poker Channel, a recent addition to the Sky portfolio of niche television channels.