Miles and Oxford professor Ron Hingley used the pretext of religious observance to slip away from the group to meet dissident author Boris Pasternak, who was being closely watched by the KGB.
Miles wrote about the meeting in a letter[4] to the London Review of Books in 2014, describing "Pasternak sitting at one of those upper windows with his eye on the garden gate, where a large shiny black car would occasionally stop for a minute or two and then move slowly on."
However, his Russian fluency also attracted the attention of KGB spy George Blake, who approached Miles while he was studying at Oxford,[5] claiming to be an official from Britain's Ministry of Defence.
Although a great lover of Russian language and literature, and a fluent speaker, Miles was never posted to Moscow, due at least in part to his earlier acquaintance with Blake.
[7] After retiring from HM Diplomatic Service in 1996 Miles joined MEC International, a consultancy promoting business with the Middle East, and became chairman a decade later.
[9] In April 2004, Miles initiated a controversial letter to Prime Minister, Tony Blair, signed by 52 retired ambassadors and calling for a new approach to policy in Palestine and Iraq.
[11] An article in August 2008, entitled "The long road to normalisation", asked rhetorically whether the recently signed compensation agreement between the United States and Libya would work.
[12] The article concluded: The most important compensation issue, Lockerbie, has been settled on the basis that Libya agreed to hand over two suspects for trial in the Scottish courts and to accept responsibility for their actions.