Twenty years ago, I made a programme for Radio 4 on Soviet military maps from the Cold War. I needed expert opinion on the highly detailed maps I had of London and Blackpool and Oleg Gordievsky, master spy of the late Cold War era, who died on Friday at the age of 86, seemed the perfect choice.
Thinking about the interview the following day I wondered if we really had been in his home. Dog food and no dog?
After a few phone calls, my producer Marya Burgess and I took a midday train from Waterloo Station to a location that, for the first time, I can name as Godalming. Our instructions were precise: to catch a particular train and go straight out of the station where we would find Oleg waiting for us.
He was just where we were told he would be, standing by the open door of his car with the engine running.
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