The Blandford Express

‘Ring of Spies’ is a British spy film, released in 1964, which is much based on the true story of the Portland Spy Ring. Filmed in Dorset, it featured Bernard Lee, who later played ‘M’ in the Bond movies, Margaret Tyzack, William Sylvester and David Kossof. Harry Houghton and his girl friend, Elizabeth ‘Bunty’ Gee were civil servants who worked at the Admiralty’s Underwater Weapons Establishment at Portland. Development work for Britain’s first nuclear submarine was taking place there. Both the heavy drinking Houghton and Gee developed a taste for the finer things in life that their modest Civil Service salaries were unable to finance. Houghton bought a car for which he paid cash and would spend more than his weekly salary on alcohol alone. Bunty was a middle aged spinster, with few friends, who lived with her mother. Until she met Houghton she had lived a sheltered life. Bunty had a reputation for being a particularly bad cook. Bunty had access to highly top secret files so in league ...

Tarrant Rushton airfield played a key role in the 1948/49 Berlin Airlift. At the time, Flight Refuelling was based at Tarrant Rushton and it was Sir Alan Cobham’s company that supplied the German capital with fuel. After the Second World War, Germany was divided into Russian, American, French & British zones. Berlin, the country’s capital was similarly divided but was located deep inside the Russian occupied sector. In June 1948, the Russians decided to block all road and rail access into the Western occupied parts of Berlin. By doing so, they hoped to starve Western Berliners of food and supplies and to force the United States, France and Britain to withdraw from the capital. The Allies responded by supplying Berlin from the air, known as the Berlin airlift. Flight Refuelling operated twelve Lancaster & Lancastrian aircraft which had been converted to carry fuel. The company’s first aircraft, laden with fuel, left Tarrant Rushton for Berlin on 27 th July 1948. The company’ tw...

She baked pies, wore slippers, loved gardening and was particularly fond of her roses in the front garden. Melita ‘ Letty’ Norwood was the most unlikely of spies  and it has been jokily said she  ’took her cocoa shaken, not stirred!’ She was born Melita Sirnis in March 1912 at 402 Christchurch Road in Pokesdown, East Bournemouth. Her father, Sacha was a Latvian political activist who produced a newspaper, the Southern Worker from their Bournemouth home. In Russia he had worked for literary giant Leon Tolstoy - author of War and Peace. Sadly, Sirnis died the day after Armistice Day suffering from TB. Her mother, Gertrude was a suffragette. ‘ Letty ’ spent her childhood in Bournemouth among a group of dedicated revolutionaries exiled from Russia who must have surely greatly influenced her. Yet this apparently kindly, but slightly dotty lady was recognised in Moscow as the KGB’s most important female agent and became the longest serving Soviet spy in Britain. In 1979, she wa...

Ethel Elizabeth Gee, known as ‘ Bunty’ , was an unassuming spinster who lived in a Portland red brick terraced house in Hambro Road with her elderly relatives. A blacksmith’s daughter, she worked as a filing clerk in the Admiralty’s top underwater establishment at Portland. Despite this lowly status, she still handled top secret papers on Britain’s submarines and underwater detection capabilities. Indeed, much of the development work for Britain’s first nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought had been undertaken at Portland. Born in Portland in May 1914, ‘ Bunty ’ has been described as ‘ plain ’ and an ‘ awful cook’ . Yet for a period in the 1950s, as a member of the Portland Spy Ring, she was one of Russia’s most valuable spies. Around 1955, she met fellow civil servant, Harry Houghton, who lived in Weymouth, a former sailor who was spying for both Poland and Russia. He was a heavy drinking divorcee who enjoyed a lifestyle far beyond his civil service income. He had bought a four bedroom...

Gordon Arnold Lonsdale was an apparently successful London based, Canadian businessman who had made his money by hiring out and selling jukeboxes, bubble gum and gambling machines. Another of his products, an electronic car locking device was awarded a gold award at an International Inventors’ Exhibition in Brussels. He was a stocky built man of medium height with a broad cheerful face and ‘very intelligent eyes. ’ On the 28 th June 1960, he had booked himself into the Crown Hotel in Blandford Forum. Yet, all was not what it seemed as Gordon Lonsdale was not his real name neither was he Canadian. His real name was Konon Trofimovich Molody and he was a 38 year old, Moscow born, Russian intelligence agent and master spy. He spoke excellent English with an American accent as he had lived for several years in the USA. Molody had stolen the identity of a dead man who had died in 1943. Purpose of his Blandford stay was later to meet two associates at a house in Meadow View Road, Weymouth...