John Vassall

William John Christopher Vassall (20 September 1924 – 18 November 1996) was a British civil servant who spied for the Soviet Union, allegedly under pressure of blackmail, from 1954 until his arrest in 1962.

There, he said later, he found himself socially isolated by the snobberies and class hierarchies of diplomatic life, his loneliness further exacerbated by his homosexuality, which was still illegal in both Britain and the Soviet Union.

The Soviets used the photographs to blackmail Vassall into working for them as a spy, initially in the Moscow embassy, and later in London, following his return there in June 1956.

During his espionage career, Vassall provided the Soviets with several thousand classified documents, including information on British radar, torpedoes, and anti-submarine equipment.

[6] Similarly, Chapman Pincher regarded Vassall as "the classic example of the spy who, while of lowly rank, can inflict enormous damage because of the excellence of his access to secret information".

He provided information of the highest value to the Soviet defence chiefs in their successful drive to expand and modernise the Red Navy.

It had become obvious to his colleagues that Vassall had some other source of income, for he moved to an expensive flat in Dolphin Square, took foreign holidays, and was said to own 36 Savile Row suits.

[14][15] The scandal caused the Macmillan government considerable embarrassment, erupting as it did at the height of the Cold War, only a year before the still-more dramatic revelations of the Profumo affair.

[18] Hungarian émigré George Mikes similarly concluded that it was Vassall's "vanity, his childish snobbery, his devouring ambition and complete lack of humour that pushed him so deep into the quagmire".

[1] Vassall subsequently changed his surname to Phillips, settled in St John's Wood, London, and worked quietly as an administrator at the British Records Association, and for a firm of solicitors in Gray's Inn.

[1] The suggestion of an improper relationship between Vassall and Tam Galbraith inspired a memorable sketch on the satirical BBC programme That Was the Week That Was, broadcast in 1963, in which Lance Percival played a senior civil servant detecting sexual innuendo in such conventional pleasantries as the salutation "My Dear Vassall" at the beginning of a letter.

[20] In 1980 the BBC broadcast a docudrama about the affair, in which Vassall was played by John Normington as "weak, vain and keen to be thought a gentleman".