On October 22, 1966, an Irish petty criminal threw a ladder made from rope and knitting needles over the wall of Wormwood Scrubs prison to a prisoner waiting on the other side. The escaper climbed the wall, dropped 20ft down the other side and was dragged, bleeding, to a getaway car. Both men fled to the Soviet Union. The escaped prisoner was George Blake, one of the most notorious spies in British history. The unlikely relationship between these two utterly different men is the subject of Simon Gray’s play Cell Mates, which is being…

Source: The Times November 27, 2017 17:03 UTC