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Why it took 25 years to solve the greatest prison break in British history

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There was nothing to suggest that October 22 1966 would be anything other than a typically dismal Saturday at Wormwood Scrubs, a dingy Victorian prison in north-west London. Late that afternoon, inmate 455 told a guard that the idea of spending his free time watching TV with the other high-security prisoners in D Hall was a “farce” and he’d prefer to read in his cell.

He then made his way to the second-floor landing, where he squeezed through a broken window and shimmied down the outside wall into the rain-slicked exercise yard sometime between 6pm and 7pm. An accomplice waited in a hiding place on Artillery Road nearby. After a brief burst of communication over walkie-talkie, a handmade rope ladder fell into the yard as the guards and inmates settled down to their weekly film night. The most audacious prison break in modern British history had begun.

When the alarm sounded at roll call less than an hour later, the prison governor picked up the phone to call Shepherd’s Bush police station. “One of our chaps has gone over the wall,” he explained to a PC Frankling. Inmate 455 was no ordinary prisoner. George Blake, the 43-year-old ex-MI6 spy turned Soviet agent, had been unmasked in 1961 following a tip-off from a Russian defector. At the Old Bailey that May, Blake was handed a 42-year sentence, the longest non-life sentence ever given by a British court. It represented, the media reported, a year for every intelligence agent killed due to Blake’s betrayal — a claim that has been contested ever since. The severity of the punishment shocked even the prime minister Harold Macmillan, who the presiding judge had consulted the night before the verdict. “The LCJ [Lord Chief Justice] has passed a savage sentence — 42 years!” Macmillan noted in his diary.

Blake had served just five years of his sentence by the time he escaped. After a months-long manhunt, he resurfaced in East Berlin, then moved permanently to Moscow. Speculation as to the identity of his accomplices dominated the news cycle, with theories ranging from the plausible to the absurd. The novelist John le Carré mused on a potential KGB operation. Others that the escape was an elaborate inside job, with British intelligence releasing Blake in order to redeploy him against the Soviets. Perhaps he had flown incognito to Sydney, or been driven up the M1 motorway in a hearse. Some even whispered that a deep-cover Czech orchestra had smuggled Blake out of Britain in a cello case. To many, the Russian connection seemed most likely. “[Blake’s] escape was [probably] engineered indirectly by the Russians, and he is now well on the way to, if not yet behind, the Iron Curtain,” declared one broadsheet editorial.

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The truth, when it finally emerged more than 20 years later, was even more extraordinary. Michael Randle and Pat Pottle were a pair of English peace activists, now middle-aged, who had met Blake at Wormwood Scrubs during a stint inside for organising a non-violent protest at Wethersfield military base in Essex. They worked on the escape plan with another inmate, Sean Bourke, a charismatic Irish career criminal with a penchant for violence and literary quotation. Their respective motivations were clear. For Randle and Pottle, Blake’s sentence represented a “vicious and indefensible” case of cold war-era political malice. For Bourke, the prison break offered an unmissable chance to inject some adventure and sense of purpose into his life.

A black and white photo of a man smiling as he walks away from imposing prison gates. The man in question is Michael Randle on his release from Wormwood Scrubs prison in February 1963, after serving an 18-month sentence for his involvement in a sit-in at a US air base in Essex
Michael Randle leaving Wormwood Scrubs in February 1963, after his 18-month sentence. It was here that he and fellow peace activist Pat Pottle met George Blake © Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A black and white image taken in 1961 of a young man sitting at a typewriter. The man is Pat Pottle, a peace activist. He is in the offices of the anti-war group the Committee of 100; the CND logo can be seen on a poster hanging on a wall behind him
Pat Pottle in 1961. While firm friends, Pottle and Randall were very different men: ‘[Pottle] drank gin and smoked, while Randle was a kind of Quaker vegetarian’ © Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

When Randle and Pottle’s roles were publicly revealed by The Sunday Times in 1987, the blowback was immediate. They were charged with three historic offences. “It would be poetic justice,” sniffed The Sun, “if this nasty pair could be locked away for the remaining 40 years of Blake’s sentence.”

When the case went to trial at the Old Bailey in June 1991, it was in the same courtroom in which Blake had been convicted 30 years earlier. The new trial, studded with Special Branch agents, bombshell testimonies and novel legal arguments, was every bit as dramatic as its predecessor. But its impact ran even deeper, its shockwaves felt today in the British criminal justice system.

Whatever the shifts in geopolitics since Blake’s day, our collective fascination with the world of international espionage is undimmed. In April this year, two young British men were accused of spying for China and subsequently charged under the Official Secrets Act. This summer, it was difficult to scroll through social media without some reference to the unmasking of Artem Viktorovich Dultsev and Anna Valerevna Dultseva, two Russian agents arrested on espionage charges in Slovenia in 2022, who were shipped back to their homeland in early August, to an effusive welcome from President Vladimir Putin. So committed were they to their cover story — an entrepreneurial Argentine family setting up home in Slovenia — that their two young children had no idea about their parents’ double life, nor spoke a word of Russian. It didn’t take a cultural critic to note the similarities to the cult TV drama The Americans.


Blake was born George Behar in Rotterdam in 1922 to a Dutch mother and Sephardic Jewish father, who was a naturalised Brit on account of his service in the first world war. Blake’s upbringing was peripatetic, with spells in the Netherlands and Egypt. Britain was a distant place experienced mostly second hand; before the outbreak of the second world war, he had visited only once. “To betray, you first have to belong. I never belonged,” he later said. The war made Blake. A talented linguist, he was recruited by MI6 in the early 1940s after a spell in the Dutch resistance under the nom de guerre Max de Vries. He arrived in Britain after a daring, circuitous journey through Belgium, France and Spain.

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Following stints reading Russian at Cambridge University after the war, and working with naval intelligence in East Germany, Blake was posted to Seoul at the start of the Korean war. He later claimed that the brutality of the war is what fully converted him to the communist cause, after a brief university flirtation with Marxist theory: “I saw the Korean war with my own eyes — young American PoWs dying and enormous American Flying Fortresses bombing small defenceless villages. And when you [have seen] that, you don’t feel particularly proud to be on the western side.”

He was captured in 1950 and, after three years in captivity, he was released and sent to Berlin by MI6 with the goal of recruiting Soviet and East German double agents. The British had no idea that Blake had long since passed a note from his captors to the Soviet embassy offering his services as double agent. For the next eight years, he would meet his Soviet handler in London and Berlin. When he was finally summoned for interrogation in London, following a tip-off from a Polish communist defector, he quickly confessed.

The news of Blake’s treachery was met with revulsion and disbelief. One MI6 training instructor reportedly burst into tears. Leniency was not likely to be on the cards. Blake did not command the same protection afforded to the more establishment “Cambridge Five”, none of whom were ever prosecuted for their decades as Soviet double agents. Blake — unapologetic, cosmopolitan, icily intellectual — didn’t have the bonhomie of Kim Philby or booze-soaked melancholy of Guy Burgess or Donald Maclean. While Philby was offered immunity in return for his full co-operation, no similar deal was offered to Blake. “But then Blake, a foreigner, was not a gentleman,” wrote historian Ben Macintyre.

A black-and white photo of a man in a suit and tie standing on a bridge. He is Sean Bourke, the third member of the trio who helped George Blake escape from prison. The picture was taken in 1968 in Bourke’s native Dublin
The trio’s third member, Sean Bourke, in 1968, back in his native Ireland, from where the British government tried, and failed, to extradite him. After enjoying a period of minor celebrity, he died penniless and alone © Bentley Archive/Popperfoto/Getty Images

I first learnt of the Blake escape long after it happened, in Thomas Grant’s Court No.1 The Old Bailey: The Trials and Scandals that Shocked Modern Britain, published in 2019. I found myself less drawn to Blake himself than to Michael Randle and Pat Pottle, the genial peace activists, and to Sean Bourke, their squiffy accomplice. How had this unlikely trio pulled off such a daring act? Were their professed motivations really so straightforward? And why had it taken decades for the might of British intelligence to catch up with them?


In January this year, I travelled from London to Saltaire, a pretty Victorian model village on the outskirts of Bradford, West Yorkshire. The walk from the station to the Randle family home took me past a preserved former cloth mill and cluster of 19th-century terraces. On arrival, I was greeted by Michael, now well into his nineties, and his youngest son Gavin, a middle-aged musician.

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I’d initially spoken to Gavin on the phone at the end of last year. It wasn’t an easy time for the family. Anne Randle, Gavin’s mother and Michael’s wife of over half a century, had recently died after a long illness. When I arrived at their home, Gavin offered up a photo of his beaming newly wed parents in the early 1960s. “I still think, ‘Oh, I must tell Anne this [or] that,’ before I realise that it isn’t possible,” Michael told me. Though there were signs his short-term memory had begun to decline, it quickly became apparent there was little wrong with his recall of the more distant past. During our afternoon together, I found both Randles urbane, winning company, the conversation serious, though laced with mischief.

Michael Randle was born in Worcester Park, Surrey in 1933. He lived in England for much of his childhood, though he spent the duration of the second world war in Ireland with his mother’s Republican family in County Carlow and Kildare. “It taught me there was more than one perspective to take [on] an issue”, he explained with wry understatement. “They lived near a prison [during] the Easter Rising and [they] could hear the executioners’ rifles from their home.” Randle, following his father, registered as a conscientious objector in his teens. In his twenties, he joined the anti-nuclear-weapons protest movement, and served as secretary of the Committee of 100, the direct action group founded by Bertrand Russell, among other grandees of the British peace movement.

Pat Pottle was born into a large, working-class family in London in 1938. His upbringing was marked by the influence of his socialist father, a trade union official. On the urging of his mother, he trained as a printer before going into business in London. Like Randle, his political commitments crystallised early on. By the end of the 1950s, Pottle was organising his first anti-war protests. He became one of the founding members of the Committee of 100 in 1960. The following year, he defended himself against charges under the Official Secrets Act relating to a sit-in at the US air base at Wethersfield, Essex. Despite putting up a spirited fight in court, Pottle, Randle and several others were jailed for 18 months and sent to Wormwood Scrubs. It was there they met George Blake.

“Pat was very outgoing. There was no side to him. He was straightforward,” said Randle when I asked him about his friend, who died in 2000 aged 62. The two men had strikingly different temperaments. “Pottle was [always] a great raconteur. He drank gin and smoked,” said Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian’s longtime former security editor and a close friend of both men. “Randle was quite ascetic and skinny. Sort of a vegetarian Quaker.” What they shared was faith in non-violent resistance.

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Randle and Pottle first met Blake at a prison music class. Pottle later wrote that the sympathy between the three was mutual. Blake admired their principled anti-nuclear stance, while they considered him to be a political prisoner. Do you ever think of escaping, Pottle asked him one day. Blake replied that he thought of little else. Pottle was soon shipped out to an open prison, while Randle remained at Wormwood Scrubs, but they continued to mull over the idea of Blake’s escape.

Randle met Sean Bourke working at the prison bakehouse. In a story crammed with unlikely, outsized characters, he is perhaps the loudest. The 32-year-old had had an eventful upbringing in Limerick. At 12, he was sent to a reformatory for stealing a bunch of bananas. After moving to England in his late teens, he was packed off to borstal for handling stolen goods. From then, his criminal career escalated. In 1961, he posted a biscuit tin containing a home-made bomb to the address of a police officer he suspected of spreading false rumours about his sexuality. The device shot into the would-be victim’s ceiling, landing Bourke a seven-year sentence. What had attracted Randle, the vegetarian pacifist, to Bourke, apart from a shared acquaintance with Blake? “He was charming and intelligent,” Randle offered, by way of explanation. “Entertaining. He had a very good sense of humour.”

By 1963, Randle was back home in north London, now with a young family to support. But this period of domesticity was soon interrupted by a phone call from Bourke. It was mid-May, 1966, and he was living in a halfway house in west London. He said he was anxious to meet up. Delighted, if surprised, to hear from him, Randle told Bourke to make his way to his family home in Kentish Town. After a brief burst of reminiscence, Bourke grew sombre. Blake’s mood had deteriorated drastically in prison, he told Randle. Bourke had agreed to work on an escape plan and had made some progress, including getting a walkie-talkie to Blake. But financing remained an issue. The Randles immediately agreed to help.

After months of preparation, Randle telephoned Pottle, who had spent a brief spell working as Bertrand Russell’s secretary following his release from prison. Randle had something to discuss in person, he told his friend. Pottle understood straight away that it must be about Blake. They met that evening at Holborn Tube station, near Pottle’s printing press, and he agreed to help.

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The success of the plot relied on a mix of courage and good fortune. Bourke sourced a getaway car, knitted a rope ladder and rented a bedsit near the prison under an assumed name. Randle drummed up some money from a small circle of well wishers in the peace movement. The escape itself passed with just one significant hitch: Blake broke his wrist on landing. A friendly doctor was rapidly procured, though it became apparent Blake would have to be moved before the bedsit’s landlady appeared for her weekly cleaning day. He then lived between a series of unsuitable safe houses before Pottle agreed to lodge him and an increasingly truculent Bourke in his Hampstead flat.

After discarding a series of ludicrous schemes — one had Blake using chemicals to black up in order to flee Britain under a false passport — a second-hand Commer camper van was procured and modified with a hidden compartment in which Blake could be stowed. Just before Christmas 1966, the Randles took what appeared to be a family road trip to Berlin. After days of relentless, amphetamine-fuelled driving, Blake was released from his hiding place into the freezing East German night. “He waved, and almost at once was lost in the darkness,” Randle recalled.


© Cristiana Couceiro

Meanwhile, in London, Bourke’s flair for self-sabotage was becoming apparent. Not only did he fail to dispose of the getaway car, but he rang a west London police station to report its precise whereabouts. During his time at Pottle’s flat, supposedly in hiding, he would regularly walk the streets of Hampstead, even accosting a local boy to post a photo of himself to the office of a tabloid newspaper. Later, it transpired that he’d made tape recordings of his and Blake’s walkie-talkie conversations, to be auctioned off to the News of the World.

Despite Bourke’s best efforts at conducting a one-man publicity campaign, the furore died down and normality gradually returned. Randle and Pottle went back to their busy lives devoted to various leftwing causes. “I remember when George Blake’s name came up when we were playing Trivial Pursuit,” recalled Pottle’s son Casper, when we spoke on the phone. “My parents started creasing up and I had no idea why.”

Blake’s and Bourke’s trajectories were less happy. Bourke followed Blake to Moscow in 1967 and the two men were placed in a lavish flat. There their relationship drifted into mutual resentment. Blake was “sullen, intolerant, arrogant and pompous”, Bourke later wrote, intimating that Blake was spying on him (almost certainly true) and even manoeuvring to have him assassinated (this more outlandish claim has never been proven). As for Blake, his flatmate’s grandstanding quickly lost its charm. “I soon began to resent him,” he wrote. “I thought at least he should do some housework.”

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In 1968, Bourke returned to Ireland, riding a wave of self-generated publicity. By now, he was speaking openly to the press about his role in the escape. Attempts at extradition by the British government failed and Bourke was left to bask in his new celebrity. His sensational tell-all, The Springing of George Blake, appeared in 1970. It set out for the first time — with major lacunae and harsh criticism of Blake — the events of the escape and its aftermath. Michael and Anne Randle became “Michael and Anne Reynolds”, and Pat Pottle became the equally easy to decode “Pat Porter”.

“Why on earth did you use our actual Christian names?” Randle demanded on the first of several visits to Bourke in Ireland during the 1970s. Bourke replied he wasn’t “the simple, uncomplicated Irishman people . . . take me for”. But the book attracted positive reviews and surprisingly little blowback from the British state. Randle and Pottle spent months waiting for a knock at the door that never came. During Randle’s second visit, Bourke said he’d taken a call from a detective from Scotland Yard who’d told him they had long known about Randle and Pottle’s involvement in Blake’s escape and decided not to prosecute, not least because they were now leading “useful lives in the community”.

Sean Bourke died penniless and alone in January 1982, having spent his last years in a caravan on the coast of County Clare. The cause of death was heart failure, likely brought on by chronic alcoholism. Public interest in Randle and Pottle continued, with a series of books dropping more unsubtle hints about their involvement in the now historic escape. When The Sunday Times named the pair outright in early October 1987, Scotland Yard finally made contact. Randle and Pottle arrived at Holborn Police Station on October 30. Their “no comment” interviews were polite and perfunctory. A formal reopening of the enquiry into the Blake escape was announced shortly afterwards, on the urging of the rightwing press and 101 MPs who signed a motion backing the new investigation.


To set out their side of the story, and counter any suggestion that they or the wider peace movement had been in thrall to the KGB, Randle and Pottle co-authored a book, The Blake Escape: How We Freed George Blake — And Why. When the two men, now well into their fifties, were charged following its publication in 1989, the enormity of their situation finally began to sink in. The maximum sentence on charges of aiding the escape of a convicted prisoner, conspiring to harbour him and conspiring to prevent, hinder or interfere with his arrest ran up to nine years each. “I was really proud of my dad,” said Casper Pottle, “[but] when the police search the house it gets real, doesn’t it? We were teenagers, it makes an impression.”

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Despite pressure to plead guilty, Randle and Pottle refused. They instead pleaded not guilty on grounds of “necessity of conscience”, a rarely invoked defence with its roots in 17th-century religious nonconformism. Its only previous modern usage was during the 1985 trial of Clive Ponting, a Ministry of Defence official who was tried and acquitted under the Official Secrets Act for revealing to an MP that government ministers had misled Parliament over the sinking of the Argentine warship General Belgrano during the Falklands war. For Randle and Pottle, Blake’s sentence had represented a moral outrage, and aiding his escape was therefore justified.

Pottle engaged Geoffrey Robertson, one of Britain’s leading human rights lawyers. “We [wanted] to argue that it was an abuse of process . . . [because] the authorities had known of their involvement since at least 1970,” Robertson explained when we spoke. In 1970, a detective named Rollo Watts had written a report outlining the case against Randle and Pottle, new evidence had revealed. The defence suspected that his report offered the truth as to why neither man had been brought to book. That it had simply been too humiliating for the state to admit that such a high-profile prisoner had been freed by a ramshackle group of outsiders.

The case moved to judicial review at the High Court in July 1990. The now retired Watts, a squat, nervous man with long, slightly out-of-time sideburns, was called to testify. He denied ever suggesting that the proposed prosecution of Randle and Pottle had been halted due to political pressure. When Watts left the witness box, two nameless men, likely intelligence agents, handed the judge a memo written by an MI5 officer in 1970. In it, the officer alleged Watts had openly said that “[prosecuting] Randle and Pottle . . . might be persecution — a big fish had got away so they were taking it out on the little fish.”

Still, the law pressed on. On November 15 1990, the “abuse of process” argument was dismissed out of hand. As Randle and Pottle’s new “conscience defence” was not formally recognised by the law, neither Robertson nor the other lawyers engaged by Randle could represent them beyond the preliminary hearings. They were on their own. The trial finally began on June 17 1991.

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A balding, grey-haired man standing by a car, in a suit and tie. He is the Soviet double agent George Blake, who escaped prison and returned to Moscow in 1996, where he lived until he died in 2020
George Blake in 2001 in Moscow, where he died in 2020. None of the more establishment ‘Cambridge Five’ spies was prosecuted, whereas Blake was serving a 42-year sentence when he met Pottle and Randle in prison © Kommersant Photo/AFP/Getty Images

For the next nine days, the public gallery was packed with supporters, and journalists jostled for space on the press benches. The atmosphere was electric. “It might sound weird, when your father’s liberty is in the balance, but it was good fun,” recalled Casper Pottle. “There was a real camaraderie. We’d be spending every day together, going to the pub at lunch.” It was remarkable, he added, to see how seamlessly his father and Randle slipped back into the campaigning mode of their youth. “They’d built up so many contacts in the press. All sorts of people showed up,” he said. “Dave Gilmour, Harold Pinter, Alexei Sayle . . . I think Dad needed the adrenaline.” John Berger, another ex-member of the Committee of 100, sent a letter of support. “I wanted to tell you how happy I was to read [about you] . . . And to tell you how much you have my admiration,” he wrote. 

Randle and Pottle pressed on with the abuse-of-process argument, despite protestations from the judge. Randle appeared in court each day with a pile of legal texts procured from London’s public libraries, citing ever more obscure cases as defence. Pottle’s approach was more direct. “If you or the jury think [our defence is] a load of old codswallop, then you can say so . . . But at least give us the chance to say it.” Neither denied their role in the escape, which they considered a humanitarian act. “I refuse to believe that George Blake would have been better rotting in some English jail than living a semi-ordinary life back in Moscow,” Pottle told the jury.

Then he called his next witness: George Blake. Over video link, Blake stressed that there had been no KGB interference in his escape and that no money had changed hands. His appearance dominated the next day’s news cycle. “I think the jury were amazed [to hear from Blake]. Almost stunned. No one seemed to be thinking, ‘Oh, how awful we’ve got this bloody spy coming from Moscow,’” said Richard Norton-Taylor, who covered the trial for The Guardian.

Despite the outpouring of support, both defendants fully expected a guilty verdict. “I remember [someone] asking what they’d take with them to prison if they were convicted,” said Norton-Taylor. “Michael said Ulysses. Pat said rolling tobacco. That summed them up.” In his closing speech, Pottle said he could understand the moral indignation about Blake’s espionage, but that Blake’s original sentence had never been about justice. Its severity could at least partly be explained by the fact that Blake was “not of the ‘old school’, not ‘one of us’. He was a foreigner and half-Jewish to boot,” Pottle told the jury. “You are 12 individuals with minds of your own . . . we think what we did was right. If you think the same, then obviously you will not find us guilty.” Then he quoted Bertrand Russell: “Remember your humanity and forget the rest.”


On a damp midweek morning in February this year, I travelled to Inner London Crown Court. I made my way to the shabby public gallery overlooking Court Four, which was packed with supporters of five climate activists charged with criminal damage after smashing a door at JPMorgan’s London headquarters in 2021 during a protest against the bank’s status as the world’s largest investor in fossil fuel expansion.

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In March 2023, two of the accused had served seven-week stints in prison after flouting a court order not to invoke the climate crisis during an unrelated trial. The judge had banned them from explaining to the jury that they had been protesting to raise awareness of climate change and fuel poverty. The past few years have witnessed a steady spate of acquittals in climate activism cases involving defendants who have deployed the same defence of conscience used by Michael Randle and Pat Pottle in the 1990s. “[The] Randle and Pottle trial has been an inspiration for the work we’ve been doing,” Tim Crosland, an Extinction Rebellion legal adviser, told me. “Juries have an absolute right to acquit . . . [that depends] on understanding why people did what they did.” 

This rash of acquittals has been a source of embarrassment for the state. Judges have taken to banning any mention of climate change, fuel poverty or even the history of the civil rights movement, and jail sentences have been passed down for contempt of court for activists who have refused to comply. In one case, government lawyers pursued Trudi Warner, a 68-year-old retired social worker, for contempt of court. She had stood alone outside Inner London Crown Court during the March 2023 trial involving the same defendants I’d seen in court. “Jurors have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to their conscience,” read her placard. This April, the High Court finally threw out the charges against her. “[It can] have a chilling effect”, said Crosland. “If people hear the story they say, ‘No, that can’t have happened’. Yes it did.”


The judge’s summing-up on June 26 1991 began with reference to Randle and Pottle’s ready admission of their guilt. Whether or not their being taken to trial after decades of inaction was an abuse of process was not a matter for the jury to concern themselves with, he said. Though he could not order a conviction, he implored the jury to “loyally honour my ruling on the law whatever view you may have formed of the defendants”. The jury retired just before noon, and Randle and Pottle waited in the court canteen. After an hour of inaction, they made their way to the pub for what they expected to be their final meal as free men.

At 3pm, the announcement filtered through the court. The jury had returned their verdict. “If you can cope, so can I,” Anne Randle whispered in her husband’s ear. In the same dock they had stood in 30 years earlier, before their fateful spell at Wormwood Scrubs, Randle and Pottle peered at the jury for any clues. Silence descended across the courtroom. “Members of the jury, in the respect of count one . . . do you find the defendants guilty or not guilty?”

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“Not guilty,” came the foreman’s reply. The verdict was greeted by a wall of noise. Randle’s sons burst into tears. Somewhere from the back of the court came a shout straight from the football terraces. “It was my brother,” laughed Casper Pottle when I asked him about it. “All the accounts have said he shouted ‘Come on you Spurs’, but he’s a Queen’s Park Rangers fan. It was ‘Come on you Rs!’”

Randle and Pottle were found not guilty on every count of the indictment. Outside the court, the jurors embraced the pair they’d just acquitted. “Thank God for the jury system and the independence of jurors,” a jubilant Randle told assembled reporters. Passers-by offered their congratulations, as did Blake when he telephoned from Moscow that evening during the raucous celebrations. Not everyone was pleased. “A Bad Day for British Justice,” stormed The Telegraph. “Stinkers of the Old Bailey,” fumed The Sun.

Norton-Taylor summed up the prevailing opinion on what became known as the “perverse verdict”. By the early 1990s, the controversy of Blake’s treachery and escape had begun to feel like a relic of the past. The cold war was nominally over and the Berlin Wall had fallen. “That atmosphere had changed, really. Juries can smell oppression. The state knew who it was years before.” Even those unsympathetic to Blake didn’t doubt the sincerity of Randle and Pottle. “They were a brilliant double act really. It was one of the reasons they were acquitted,” said Casper Pottle. “It was a DIY jailbreak and a DIY defence. I’ve always thought those were contributing factors.”

Some regard Randle and Pottle’s acquittal as evidence of a more decent epoch in British justice. A time when fair-mindedness could trump relentless pressure from the tabloid press. “Perhaps the biggest heroine of the case was English justice itself and its tradition of independent juries and equality before the law,” wrote Thomas Grant in his history of the Old Bailey. Still, the lack of an earlier prosecution had less to do with high mindedness, than a desire to avoid humiliation. Randle and Pottle’s acquittal was down to the jury and not the beneficence of the state.

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George Blake died in December 2020, aged 98, having lived long enough to see his reputation move from highly controversial to cold war curio. Randle and Pottle continued to take an interest in politics and protest. “My father was political right up until his death,” said Casper Pottle. “He kept that anarchist streak. He always kept his own mind. I remember just before the trial, it was during the Gulf war, I went down to a demo with some friends from school. We sat down in the road by Parliament Square. A policeman told us to move and we did.” Later, he returned to find that his parents had joined the same protest. When they refused to move, they were both arrested and taken to the police cells for processing.

LONDON LEGENDS

This is the final in a series on urban legends. Francisco Garcia’s first piece was about the cult of personality around Britain’s most prolific hangman, Albert Pierrepoint. The second was about the compulsive digger known as the Hackney Mole Man.

Francisco Garcia is the author of “We All Go Into the Dark: the Hunt for Bible John”, published by Mudlark/HarperCollins

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Restrictive EU law could benefit London’s Asian art scene

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“Where there is energy and dynamism, there is a market,” says Henry Howard-Sneyd, longtime chair of Asian art at Sotheby’s and founding member of the Asian Art in London (AAL) event, which takes place at the end of this month. Howard-Sneyd is only too aware of the “constant flux and flow of the Asian art market”, as he puts it. He and his colleagues in London have witnessed waves of new buyers from Japan in the 1980s and ’90s and from China more recently, whose aggressive bidding peaked in 2015.

Tastes have changed and power has shifted to New York, Hong Kong, mainland China and Paris. Yet this autumn season offers a reinvigorated London scene, with world-class, museum-quality pieces again on offer in saleroom and gallery, in part thanks to a forthcoming EU law on artwork origins.

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Iwona Tenzing, whose gallery Tenzing Asian Art is making its debut at the Frieze Masters art fair next week, cited not only the “unparalleled exposure to an international audience” as a reason to show at the fair but also uncertainties arising from a 2019 EU law restricting the importation of “non-European” art into the bloc, which is expected to become operational by June 2025. Briefly, this requires proof that an object more than 200 years old and valued in excess of €18,000 was legally exported from the country of origin (itself not necessarily easy to determine, given changing geographical borders).

For works of art that left those countries centuries or even a few decades ago, this may prove an impossible paperchase. A theoretically laudable law aiming to restrict the illicit trade in cultural property is likely to have a profound effect on collectors, dealers and auction houses, and give London, which has lost ground to Paris, a distinct advantage now that it is outside the EU.

Tenzing, which has galleries in San Francisco and Hong Kong, will unveil a Tibetan thangka (scroll painting in distemper and gold on cloth) of the Buddha Vairocana dating to the late 12th or early 13th centuries, described as one of the rarest and most significant surviving examples of the period and priced at several million dollars.

Detail of a 12th-century painting on cloth of several Buddha-like figures, with variying skin colours, seated next to each other in rows
Detail from ‘Buddha Vairocana and his Entourage’, a 12th- or 13th-century Tibetan painting made on a scroll, being sold at Tenzing Asian Art © Courtesy: Tenzing Asian Art

Asian art has always been shown at Frieze Masters, but the arrival of the veteran Chinese art specialist Gisèle Croës in 2018 proved a game-changer. As a member of the fair’s selection committee, she argued for a more global representation of art and for an expansion of its range of older art, Croës explains from her Brussels gallery. At her suggestion, New York dealer Carlton Rochell joined the fray, contributing outstanding Buddhist and Hindu sculpture — Khmer, Indian and Gandharan. Last year, another New York dealer, Japanese specialists Thomsen Gallery, arrived; Erik Thomsen reported sales of several important works. This year, Thomsen’s folding screens and scroll paintings will be complemented by gold lacquer boxes, medieval stoneware jars and ikebana baskets.

Croës’s own stand also reflects Frieze Masters’ expansion into the realm of the more traditional antiques fair. Lined with late 18th- or early 19th-century Chinese wallpaper panels, she has created the “salon of a collector”, with lacquer furniture, imperial champlevé enamel garden stools — thought to have belonged to Marcel Proust — and bejewelled silver and silver gilt jardinieres (prices €40,000-€350,000).

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Two bejewelled, highly decorated rectangular vases which, instead of containing actual flowers, contain artificial plants with branches made from gold, silver and copper, and flowers made from  precious stones and metals
Two matching jardinieres from China’s Qianlong period (1736-1795), decorated with silver, gilt copper, jade, rock crystal, mother of pearl, rose quartz, ruby and enamel © Courtesy Gisèle Croës

Hong Kong/London-based newcomer Rossi & Rossi is presenting painters from the postwar Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group. Gana Art joins three existing gallerists from Seoul, presenting a solo show of Kim Kulim, a central figure of the Korean avant-garde. Shibunkaku of Kyoto presents postwar Japanese calligraphy, paintings and ceramics.

As Howard-Sneyd points out, this emphasis on Modern and contemporary ceramics, painting and printmaking in the broad London scene marks one of the biggest shifts in taste since the launch of AAL in 1998. The first of such citywide initiatives bringing together specialist galleries, auction houses and museums, the event reflects unusually close collaboration between the art trade this year: the leading auction houses are giving space in their showrooms to visiting commercial galleries and private dealers for the first time.

Three main ground-floor spaces at Sotheby’s will present stock from 12 galleries, including a show by the blue-chip contemporary Asian art specialist Sundaram Tagore, with jewellery, textiles, arms and armour among the mix. Altogether, the seven participating auction houses are adding 21 auctions of Asian and Islamic art to the 25 or so dealer shows. The most spectacular auction lot promises to be an exceptionally rare pair of 16th-century Chinese wucai or “five-enamel” polychrome “fish” jars and covers, with golden carp swimming among swaying lotus and other flora (Sotheby’s, est £600,000-£1mn). Only one other complete pair is known to survive.

Two roundish porcelain jars with lids, lavishly decorated  with paintings of goldfish, carp, lotus and aquatic flora
Two wucai ‘fish’ jars and covers, from the Jiajing period (1521-1567) © Courtesy Sotheby’s

In their own gallery in Clifford Street, leading London dealer Eskenazi focuses on the painterly early blue-and-white porcelains from the Yuan and early Ming dynasties ($500,000 to more than $1mn). Included here is another great rarity, a large guan (jar) from circa 1320-52, its panels ornamented with applied and incised flowering shrubs in underglaze copper red. Daniel Eskenazi is expecting to see Chinese clients and US museum curators returning to London. “When there is a critical mass of high-quality works at auctions, fairs and dealer exhibitions, true collectors do come.”

Frieze Masters, October 9-13, frieze.com. Asian Art in London, October 30-November 8, asianartinlondon.com

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Seaside town dubbed City of Painters has Cornwall-like streets and tiny beaches

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The French seaside town of Collioure attracted a number of artists back in the day

A PRETTY seaside town has compared to Cornwall – with a very arty history.

Collioure, in France, has inspired a number of artists including Picasso and Matisse.

The French seaside town of Collioure attracted a number of artists back in the day

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The French seaside town of Collioure attracted a number of artists back in the dayCredit: Alamy
Collioure is near to the Spanish border

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Collioure is near to the Spanish borderCredit: Alamy
The streets are lined with galleries and art shops

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The streets are lined with galleries and art shopsCredit: Alamy

Now dubbed the City of Painters, the Museum of Modern Art continues on the legacy.

As many as three million tourists visit a year, despite having just 3,000 locals.

It was even named France‘s favourite village, in a local competition that has ben running for more than a decade.

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Expect influences from both France and Catalonia – it is 15 miles from the Spanish border.

Otherwise it is worth just walking through the multicoloured streets, full of cafes, shops and galleries.

Don’t leave without trying some local Collioure’s anchovies and locally-made white and red wines.

A tourist said it was “one of the prettiest towns in France,” while another said it “could be compared to St Ives in Cornwall

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One of the main attractions is the 800-year-old Meiveal castle, Château Royal de Collioure which is easy to walk to and has the best views of the town.

Anna Richards, who lives in France, said of the village to inews: “So many artists have set up studios that every narrow street feels like a gallery.

“There are hundreds of different kaleidoscopic interpretations of the town, the harbour and the Mediterranean Sea.

The beautiful French town with Venice style canals

“Its two beaches include a crescent of custard-coloured, slightly shingly sand between the harbour and bell tower, and Plage de Port d’Avall, the other side of the Château Royal, which is framed by houses as colourful as an artist’s palette.”

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The Château Royal looks like a sandcastle between them, angular and built in blocks, as though it’s made from Lego.

The best way to get there is to fly to Perpignan Airport, with direct UK flights from both London Stansted and Birmingham.

Collioure is just 20 minutes from there by train.

It has shingle beaches along the coastline

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It has shingle beaches along the coastlineCredit: Alamy
The pretty streets are worth a wander too

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The pretty streets are worth a wander tooCredit: Alamy

If you want an affordable stay, there is a Eurocamp just 15 miles away which the Sun’s Joel Davis visited.

Here’s another quaint village in France that is often named the country’s most beautiful.

A tiny French island is a popular place for locals to visit – that Brits may not have heard of.

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And here’s the holiday region dubbed the French Cotswolds.

Everything you need to know about visiting France

  • Brits need to have a passport with at least three months left on it.
  • No visas are needed for anyone staying up to 90 days within an 180-day period but you need to make sure your passport is stamped on entry and exit.
  • You may also need to show proof of accommodation and funds, around €120 a day.
  • The country uses the euro with with around €10 working out to £8.55.
  • France is one hour ahead of the UK
  • Direct flights to France from the UK take between 1-4 hours depending on the destination
  • Or you can travel by train with Eurostar, with destinations including Paris or Lille.
  • Direct ferry services also operate between the UK and France, with some journeys taking 90 minutes.

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Aldi and Lidl bring back popular wooden toy ranges – they’re perfect for Christmas gifts and prices start from £2.99

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Aldi and Lidl bring back popular wooden toy ranges - they're perfect for Christmas gifts and prices start from £2.99

ALDI and Lidl have confirmed the relaunch of their popular wooden toy range with prices starting at just £1.99.

The budget supermarket toys are a perfect gift for this year’s Christmas.

Aldi and Lidl have confirmed the relaunch of their wooden toy range

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Aldi and Lidl have confirmed the relaunch of their wooden toy rangeCredit: Aldi
Aldi's wooden toy range will hit their shelves on October 10

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Aldi’s wooden toy range will hit their shelves on October 10Credit: Aldi
Aldi will bring back its wooden Cuthbert

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Aldi will bring back its wooden CuthbertCredit: Aldi
Shoppers will have to act quickly after their range sold out last year

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Shoppers will have to act quickly after their range sold out last yearCredit: Aldi

Lidl’s wooden range is expected to arrive in stores across the UK from October 17 with Aldi’s range available from October 10.

Aldi has announced that they’re bringing back over 50 products to choose from, but shoppers will have to act quickly after their range sold out last year.

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Parents will be eager to get their hands on the returning favourites including the Wooden Toy Kitchen, scanning at the tills for £34.99.

The discount retailer chain is also bringing back the wooden Cuthbert which previously caused a stir with M&S fans.

In 2021 M&S lodged an infringement claim against Aldi arguing the chocolate cake was too similar to its classic Colin the Caterpillar which has been around for 30 years with an unchanged design.

But Cuthbert returned to shelves in February last year after the two supermarkets called a truce in an agreed settlement

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To complete the kitchen experience, Aldi’s Wooden Kitchen Set (£9.99) includes coffee cups, a teapot and coasters.

This Christmas, Aldi’s range includes travel-friendly toys such as the Toy Roleplay Bag costing just £9.99.

The item features a Paramedic and Dentist Set, which allows your children to roleplay their dream jobs.

Aldi is also introducing the New Wooden Horse Box and Beauty Station, scanning for £24.99 each.

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The newest products in the Middle Aisle of Lidl

Here’s a list of all the wooden toys available this year:

  • Wooden Climbing Slide and Arch (£39.99)
  • Wooden Climbing Triangle and Cube (£54.99)
  • Three Storey Wooden Dolls House (£39.99)
  • Wooden Toy Kitchen (£34.99)
  • Wooden Bike and Rocker (£24.99) 
  • Wooden Aldi Supermarket/Market Stall (£29.99)  
  • Wooden Horsebox/Beauty Station (£24.99) 
  • Wooden Double-Sided Easel (£24.99) 
  • Wooden Hospital/ Airport/ Zoo (£24.99)
  • Wooden Castle/ Construction Sets (£24.99) 
  • Wooden Washing Machine/Fridge (£19.99)
  • Wooden Tabletop Assortment (£19.99 
  • Interactive Dog/Cat (£19.99)
  • Wooden Baby Walker (£19.99) 
  • Wooden Fold Out Playsets (£19.99)
  • Wooden Activity Tree (£16.99)
  • Wooden Railway Sets (£14.99)
  • Wooden Dolls House Furniture (£14.99)
  • Wooden Doll Accessories (£11.99)
  • Wooden Toy Roleplay Bags (£9.99)
  • Wooden Kettle/Coffee/Hot Chocolate/Cleaning Set (£9.99)
  • Wooden Kids Tool Belts (£9.99)
  • Wooden Kitchen Appliances (£9.99)
  • Wooden Play Food/Food Role Play Sets (£9.99) 
  • Wooden Fold Out Vehicles (£9.99)
  • Wooden Animal Train (£9.99) 
  • Play Mat Sets (£9.99)
  • Wooden Large Vehicles (£9.99)
  • Wooden Doll Care Accessory Sets (£9.99)
  • Wooden Kitchen Sets (£9.99)
  • Wooden Building Blocks (£9.99)
  • Wooden Ramp Racer/Hammer Set (£9.99)
  • Wooden Grocery Sets (£8.99)
  • Wooden Activity Boards (£10.99)
  • Wooden Musical Sets (£8.99)
  • Wooden Musical Pull Along Animals (£8.99)
  • Wooden Doughnut and Cake Assortment (£7.99)
  • Wooden Birthday Cake (£7.99)
  • Wooden Family Sets (£7.99)
  • Wooden Biscuit Assort (£7.99)
  • Plush Dolls 2024 (£6.99)
  • Wooden Magnetic Box Assortment (£6.99)
  • Wooden Vehicle Box Set (£6.99) 
  • Wooden Meal Sets (£6.99)
  • Wooden Animal Number Puzzles (£4.99)
  • Wooden Vehicles (£3.99)
  • Wooden Teething Vehicle (£3.99)
  • Wooden 2d Wheeled Animals (£2.99)

Lidl also confirmed the relaunch of its wooden toy range, which parents will be eager to snap up for Christmas.

The popular bargain chain will offer premium toy products for shoppers willing to spend more.

The supermarket’s Wooden Play Kitchen will be scanning at tills for a whopping £49.99 and features a play oven, light-up hobs, a microwave and a sink.

Lidl will also be selling more affordable items in their range such as their Montessori Style Wooden Rainbow Puzzle (£3.99) said to be perfect for households who enjoy hours of family fun.

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Here is the full list of wooden toys available at Lidl this year:

  • Wooden 2-in-1 Baby Clinic and Vets (£39.99)
  • Wooden Toy Tool Assortment (£5.99)
  • Wooden Workbench (£49.99)
  • Wooden Railway Set Farm, Fairy Land, Police, Fire Department (£7.99)
  • Wooden Train Set Construction / Fairground (£29.99)
  • Wooden Railway Set XL City / Dinosaur (£39.99)
  • Wooden Road City / Racetrack (£14.99)
  • Wooden Train Set City / Countryside (£14.99)
  • Wooden Train Set (£4.99)
  • Wooden Kitchen Accessories (£9.99)
  • Wooden Ice Cream Trolley / Tabletop Pizza Oven (£19.99)
  • Wooden Chunky Vehicles (£3.99)
  • Wooden Room Play Set (£9.99)
  • Wooden Kids’ Easel (£19.99)
  • Wooden Food Play Set (£6.99)
  • Wooden Flexible Doll Family or Doll’s House Furniture (£6.99)
  • Wooden Play Kitchen (£49.99)
  • Wooden Supermarket Accessories (£9.99)
  • Wooden Dressing Table (£39.99)
  • Wooden Vehicle Sets (£2.99)
  • Wooden Train Set City / Dinosaur World (£39.99)
  • 3D Wooden Learning Toys (£9.99)
  • Wooden Puzzle (£1.99)
  • Wooden Stacking Toy (£7.99)
  • Wooden Marble Run (£12.99)
  • Wooden Games (£3.99)
  • Wooden Learning Games (£3.99)
  • Wooden Learning Puzzle (£3.99)
  • Wooden Toy Assortment Building Blocks (£7.99)
  • Wooden Flexible Doll Family or Doll’s House Furniture (£6.99)
  • Montessori Style Wooden Rainbow Puzzle (£3.99)
  • Montessori Style Wooden Counting Set (£7.99)
  • Montessori Style Wooden Light up Box (£19.99)
  • Wooden Learning Games (£3.99)
  • Wooden Puzzle / Pull Toy (£3.99)
  • Wooden Learning Board Assortment (£7.99)
  • Wooden Learning Tablet / Wooden Mobile Phone & Camera (£7.99)
  • Wooden Wall Toys (£12.99)

It’s worth checking ahead with your local supermarket if they have what you’re looking for in stock before you go to avoid a wasted trip.

You can check how close you are to your nearest Aldi and Lidl supermarket using this handy store locator.

And remember to scout around other supermarkets for more toy deals – you never know what you can find elsewhere for less.

It comes after Tesco issued an urgent recall urging customers not to buy certain mince pies because they could contain glue.

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And shoppers are racing to their nearest supermarket to stock up on Roses, Quality Street, Celebrations, and Heroes tubs, scanning at tills for just £3.95 each.

Aldi's range includes travel-friendly toys

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Aldi’s range includes travel-friendly toysCredit: Aldi

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Collector Kiran Nadar on Indian art and building museums

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“I never had any formal art training: I just learnt as I went along,” says Indian collector and philanthropist Kiran Nadar. Her vast collection of South Asian art now numbers 15,000 pieces, a small selection of which is being shown in a major exhibition at the Barbican cultural centre in London, The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998.

In Nadar’s London home, an elegant apartment in a listed building overlooking Regent’s Park, one wall is dominated by a painting of horses by MF Husain — often known as the “Picasso of India” — while, on another wall, a painting by Manjit Bawa shows a flautist playing to a group of grey cows. Small sculptures by Henry Moore are dotted around on the tables and a beautiful inlaid ivory cabinet stands by the door.

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Nadar, wearing a flowing green, pink and orange robe, is relaxed, friendly and open as we sit down to talk about how she started collecting, her philanthropy and the new museum she is opening in Delhi.

Stylised painting of a man seated on a red background, playing the flute to an audience of around half a dozen cows
‘Bhavna’ (2000) by Manjit Bawa. It was only after buying Bawa’s work that Kiran Nadar became ‘galvanised’ as a collector © Courtesy the artist and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. Photo By Lydia Goldblatt for the FT

Her collecting began once she was married. After studying English literature at university in India, Nadar met her husband, Shiv Nadar, the billionaire founder of India’s HCL Technologies, when she was working in advertising and he was a client. “My first major art purchase was of two works by MF Husain for our home — in fact he was asked to paint one but he brought us two, so we kept them. And then I bought a graphic male nude, “Runners” (1982), by Rameshwar Broota — my husband was horrified! I was a bit crestfallen and told him we had to go to the studio and apologise [for changing our minds], but when he met the artist he said I was right to have the painting. And it is in his study to this day.”

But it was only after buying work by Manjit Bawa that she became “galvanised”: “I never really thought I was collecting, just acquiring. But then it reached a stage that we had no more wall space and I was just putting them into storage. It wasn’t even formalised storage, it was in the basement. I realised it was a bit futile to leave them like that.

Lady in a colourful striped dress, seated on a white, minimalist chaise longue in front of a large cubist-style painting of moving horses
Kiran Nadar sits in front of an untitled 1960s MF Husain painting at her Regents Park home © Lydia Goldblatt

By 2010 she had acquired 500 works, so she decided to create a space to show them, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) — initially on the HCL campus in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, then in South Court Mall in New Delhi, supported by the Shiv Nadar Foundation. A vast new museum, designed by Adjaye Associates, will open on a 100,000-square-metre site directly across from the Indira Gandhi international airport in New Delhi in 2026 or 2027.

I ask her about the choice of the Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye for her new museum. Since that decision was taken in 2019, Adjaye has been accused of sexual assault, sexual harassment and promoting a toxic work culture according to an investigation in the Financial Times last year, allegations which he has denied.

“The choice [of Adjaye] was made by a jury . . . which whittled applicants to six, out of the initial 60. And Adjaye was the outright winner,” says Nadar. (A 2019 press release said there were five on the shortlist from 47 applicants.) “At that stage, we had absolutely no idea about David’s personal life and we had paid about two-thirds of what our commitment was. So we continue to work with Adjaye Associates and David will not be involved as a person, on any of our projects, until such time that we are comfortable. That’s the way it stands today.”

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Stylised oil-on-canvas painting of a group of people on a Mumbai road, in front of an old-fashioned black-and-yellow Bombay taxi cab, including people sitting on a stationery moped, children playing in the gutter, a man on a bicycle, people seated on the floor in conversation, a naked woman lying in the road, lepers with bandaged limbs, and a beggar holding out a cup. There are also dogs, goats and horses roaming among them.
‘Off Lamington Road’ (1986) by Gieve Patel, a classic scene of Mumbai street life © Courtesy Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art

While her collecting focus was on works by the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, a Mumbai-based collective of artists synthesising Indian art history and European Modernism from 1947, she also bought contemporary art: “I bought at huge prices. Then the crash came and even today some of the works haven’t reached what I paid for them at that time.” That “crash”, specifically in Indian art, took place in 2006-07 and was fuelled by speculation and the creation of art funds. Prices continued to fall over the next few years, in some cases, as she says, never to recover.

“We’re keen that Indian art gets more international recognition,” she says. KNMA part-funded the Indian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019 (only the second time the country has staged one) and this year organised a retrospective of MF Husain there. “India is such an important country. Every country has a pavilion [at the Biennale] and so should we; if there is no space in the Giardini, there must be another important space [the Biennale organisers] can give us. I think at the next Biennale, India will have its own space.”

A pair of ornaments carved from black wood, depicting mythical roaring lions, each on top of a carved stand, atop a mirrored table.
A pair of ebony lions (1848) on a mirrored table at Nadar’s central London home © Lydia Goldblatt for the FT
Close up of the connecting legs and joints of a modernist-looking table, all of which are painted in bright shades of yellow, green, blue or red.
Detail from ‘Mayz’ (Table), (2018) by Rasheed Araeen, in Kiran Nadar’s London home © Courtesy the artist and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. Photo By Lydia Goldblatt for the FT

As well as Indian art, Nadar’s collection includes western names: she mentions Antony Gormley, Olafur Eliasson and William Kentridge, as well as South Asian diaspora artists such as Shahzia Sikander, Anish Kapoor and Raqib Shaw.

Art isn’t her only passion. “I’m actually very multi-dimensional!” she exclaims, waving a hand in the air. She is one of India’s foremost bridge players and will represent her country at the World Bridge Games in Buenos Aires this year.

Photomontage of a woman’s head poking out from a lake, with a flock of what looks like black-headed white ibis birds  fluttering around her, one apparently standing on top of her head
‘Mild Terrors II’ (1996) by CK Rajan © Courtesy the artist and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi

I bring the conversation back to the future of her collection. “For the moment it is funded by the foundation, but there will be an endowment. I can’t be here for ever, and I can’t leave it in hands where it’s not going to serve: we will make sure it will be very, very professional.”

The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998’ runs to January 5, barbican.org.uk

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Natwest banking app down for thousands of customers

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Natwest banking app down for thousands of customers

NatWest’s online banking app has gone done this morning leaving thousands of customers unable to access their cash.

A report on Downdector has shown over 3,000 savers have been unable to access their money.

Natwest banking app is down for thousands of customers

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Natwest banking app is down for thousands of customersCredit: Alamy

Customers have taken to X, formally known as Twiiter, to complain about the tech issue.

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One user said: “I just can’t log in. I have tried closing and re-opening the app”.

Another said, “How long will it be until it’s resolved? I need to access some money.”

The British bank told customers on social media that the team is “working hard to get things resolved as soon as possible but we have not been provided a time frame”.

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The best lamps for dark autumn days

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Can you recommend some lamps (floor and table) to brighten up autumn evenings? And what do you think about cordless versions?

Oh, I love a lamp. Give me a surface and I’ll pop a lamp on it in no time at all. My biggest bugbear when visiting people (some, not all, obviously, because let’s be honest — I know quite a few interior designers) is that there are never enough lamps for my liking. 

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I’ve mentioned many times in this column my aversion to overhead lighting. But not in all circumstances: a ceiling light above a dining table, naturally, can be useful and look great. Although even in this scenario I’d prefer very dim bulbs or candles — it’s more of an atmosphere thing than actually wanting light to be cast down from above. No, I don’t need that. What I do need is to be surrounded by lamps and a warm, orangey glow diffused through lampshades. After all, everyone looks better in soft lamplight.

So, what lamps to go for? At home I like a heady combination of materials, styles, colours and ages, so we have old porcelain lamps, newly made plaster ones, a bit of glass, a little brass . . . Here are my current favourites on the market, some more traditional in style and others more contemporary:

A table lamp with a curved brass stand which holds two green lampshades
Table lamp 2483, by Svenskt Tenn

Stockholm’s Svenskt Tenn sells some of the most beautiful lamps around. (Full disclosure: I have worked with the company on collaborative collections in the past.) Its Table Lamp 2483 (€768) was designed by Josef Frank in 1936, and, with its swooping brass arms, is a very good example of the elegant, airy design that he gave all of his lamps. I also particularly like its Floor Lamp 1838 (€1,360) in nickel-plated brass with cognac-coloured leather wrapped around the base. I’m very much enjoying Soane’s new Curlew Floor Light too: taking its inspiration from a Swedish design in Soane’s collection dating from the 1930s, it has an elegant, curved arm, reminiscent of the curlew’s slender beak.

Zara Home makes some affordable options: its Table Lamp with Tripod Base has something of 1920s France about it, with its elegant three legs and iron construction. I’ve seen similar antique iron lamps as well as versions made by designers that are perhaps more beautiful and intricate, but at £79.99, this is a steal.

When shopping for my own home, more often than not I buy antique lamps. Hampshire’s Max Rollitt is a great port of call, particularly in reference to my point about hankering after a mix of materials in a room. Rollitt is currently selling a very lovely 19th-century glazed porcelain baluster vase (£980), which has been turned into a lamp and wired. The colour naturally appeals to me: proper, eye-searing acid yellow. 

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A bright yellow lamp base made from a vase, with a white shade
A Qing Dynasty vase, now converted into a lamp by Max Rollitt
A wide bottle with a narrow neck in dark brown glass, with a lamp fitting added where the cork would go
An early 20th century glass bottle, converted into a lamp, also by Max Rollitt

I’m also drawn to an early 20th-century glass bottle lamp (£440). It’s sort of the opposite of the yellow porcelain lamp — a sober, humble number, I like it just as much. Its shape is elegant, as is its treacly greenish-brown colour, which will look wonderful lit from above.

It’s interesting to note that neither of these lamps started their lives as lamps. The bottle got a massive upgrade. So think imaginatively — if you come across an old bottle or piece of pottery at a junk shop that you can’t live without but perhaps don’t quite know what to do with, consider taking it to a specialist to convert.

Let’s talk about portable options. In the past few years many more options for cordless lamps have appeared on the market, and I’m grateful. There are spots in all houses in which it would be difficult or impossible to have cords trailing. At home I have a cordless lamp on my bathroom windowsill, and it’s a godsend on dark evenings because I’d much rather bathe with the glow of a lamp and a couple of candles than switch on the ceiling light.

Zara Home’s Monochrome Touch Table Lamp (£39.99) comes in six colours (I like the red and green options) and is very slick. It switches on and off by touching the top and has three light intensities. I’m also very much into Hay’s Mousqueton Portable Lamp (£165), named after the French word for carabiner. Designed by Inga Sempé for the Danish brand, the lamp is made from spun-steel. A multipurpose carabiner hook enables the lamp to be suspended from a branch or rope — a great option for gardens, or, if you fancy braving it in the winter, camping.

A table lamp with a flat round base and a flattened dome-shaped dark green shade
Zara’s Monochrome Touch Table Lamp, available in six colours

Last but not least: bulbs. I admit that I find bulb-buying rather tricky. It’s all that talk of lumens and kelvins. When I start trying to understand it, I realise I’d rather be doing literally anything else. Luckily there is much advice to be found online. Thermodynamic temperature is measured in kelvin and relates to the colour of light emitted from a lightbulb, ie whether it is warm or cold. Bulbs with 2,700K–3,000K emit a warm white light, my recommendation. A higher number means a colder light. Dowsing & Reynolds makes a range of filament lightbulbs in different shapes and sizes, and has produced a very handy guide to buying bulbs for different rooms in a house (this can be found on their website). A bright idea!

If you have a question for Luke about design and stylish living, email him at lukeedward.hall@ft.com. Follow him on Instagram @lukeedwardhall

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