Despite having performed successfully for several weeks during the pre-London warm-up dates in Guildford and Watford then at the Richmond Theatre, Fry left the West End production after three days.

[4] The play was revived at the Hampstead Theatre in December 2017, in a new production directed by Edward Hall and starring Geoffrey Streatfeild as George Blake.

[5] The play concerns George Blake, who has been convicted for spying for the Russians and sentenced to forty-two years' imprisonment, and a fellow prisoner, Sean Bourke.

In 1995, Stephen Fry famously walked out of the play near the start of its West End run, after his performance received a bad review in the Financial Times.

[6] Simon Gray described Fry's action as "cowardly", and in a statement to the press said: "It is disgraceful that so much media attention has been devoted to this squalid little story ...