Tinker, Tailor, Scouser, Spy - Chris Jones discusses

20th February 2025

Chris Jones will be in Waterstones Liverpool to discuss his fascinating book "The Spy Who Helped The Soviets Win Stalingrad & Kursk - Alexander Foote & The Lucy Spy Ring". In his short life, Liverpool-born Alexander Foote went from being a volunteer in the International Brigade in Spain to becoming an agent of Soviet military intelligence in Switzerland. Pretending to his friends that he was a dim-witted Englishman with private means, Foote became the key telegraphist of the so-called ‘Red Three’ network of radio stations, communicating top secret German intelligence to the USSR from under the noses of the Swiss authorities. The information from Foote’s Morse key originated from sources in Germany and came to Foote via the enigmatic figure of Rudolph Rossler, known as Agent Lucy. Where he obtained the information from is a mystery that has never been solved. During the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, Soviet generals came to depend on the information from Foote’s transmitter and those of his comrades. On his release from a ten-month remand in a Swiss gaol on an espionage charge, Foote absconded to Paris in 1944 before being invited for debriefing in Moscow. When he arrived, he became aware that he was under suspicion of being a British spy and it took all his wit to talk his comrades in Soviet intelligence out of sending him to the gulag: a fate that waited for many of the others in his Swiss network. Disillusioned with life in the USSR, Foote approached British intelligence while he was on a Soviet mission in Berlin. He made them an offer: if they got him back to Britain he would tell them all he knew about Soviet intelligence, from the inside. Chris will be in conversation with Dr Andrew Larner. Dr Andrew Larner worked as a consultant neurologist in Liverpool from 2000 to 2023. Now in retirement he pursues his long-standing interests in the history of medicine. The talk will be followed by an audience Q&A and a book signing. Further details: 0151 709 9820