Sean Bourke

Sean Bourke (died 1982), from Limerick, helped Michael Randle and Pat Pottle to arrange the 22 October 1966 prison escape of the Soviet spy, George Blake.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Bourke later joined Blake in Moscow but then returned to Ireland where he was interviewed on television[8] and published his own account of the escape.[9] Britain sought his extradition[10] but this was denied by the Irish courts on the grounds that arranging the escape was a political act.

As a boy of 12, Bourke was sentenced to three years in Daingean reformatory in October 1947.[11] Subsequently, he spent time in Wormwood Scrubs prison in Britain, which is where he met Randle, Pottle and Blake.[12]

Sean Bourke appears as a character in Simon Gray's play Cell Mates, which tells the story of Blake's escape from Wormwood Scrubs and Bourke's subsequent visit to Moscow. In the original production Bourke was played by Rik Mayall.

Personal life

References

  1. ^ Kevin O’Connor, Blake and Bourke and The End of Empires, ISBN 095356973X, 2003
  2. ^ Illtyd Harrington, Forget the train robbers, this was the great escape, Camden New Journal, 29 May 2003 -- while this article provides some useful details, several dates have been transcribed incorrectly
  3. ^ Patrick Pottle, Daily Telegraph, 4 October 2000
  4. ^ Richard Norton-Taylor, Pat Pottle, The Guardian, 3 October 2000
  5. ^ Nick Cohen, A jailbreak out of an Ealing comedy, New Statesman, 9 October 2000
  6. ^ Michael Randle and Pat Pottle, The Blake Escape: How We Freed George Blake - and Why, ISBN 0245547819, 1989
  7. ^ Kieran Fagan, Escape of the century - or farce?, Irish Times, 5 May 2003
  8. ^ Sean Bourke Interview (part 2) This Youtube segment appears to intercut a 1968 interview with a British documentary and with a later RTÉ interview in which the interviewer appear to be Mike Murphy. The British documentary includes a recording which Burke made of a two-way radio conversation he had with Blake inside the prison, on 18 October 1966, four days before the escape.
  9. ^ Sean Bourke, The Springing of George Blake, ISBN 0304935905, 1970
  10. ^ Extradition (Irish Republic), Hansard, 30 July 1982
  11. ^ Michael Byrne, Daingean Reformatory, Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society, 9 January 2007
  12. ^ Simon Gray, Cell Mates, 1995. The original production of this play about Bourke and Blake starred Stephen Fry as George Blake and Rik Mayall as Bourke.