Melita Norwood

Norwood was born Melita Sirnis at 402 Christchurch Road in Bournemouth, Dorset He produced a newspaper entitled The Southern Worker: A Labour and Socialist Journal, which was influenced by the October Russian Revolution, and the paper published his translations of works by Lenin and Trotsky. He was involved with the Tuckton House group of exiles, publishing translated editions of Tolstoy's works. Her mother joined the Co-operative Party. Norwood won a scholarship in 1923 for an education at Itchen Secondary School, Southampton, becoming school captain in 1928. She then went on to study Latin and Logic at the University College of Southampton, before dropping out in 1931. After leaving University, Norwood moved to the German city of Heidelberg, where she stayed for a year and became involved in anti-fascist activism. ==Career==

From 1932, Sirnis worked as a secretary with the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association. who was of Russian Jewish descent (he later changed his name to Norwood), a chemistry teacher, teachers' trades union official, and lifelong communist. Melita Norwood left the Independent Labour Party after the group splintered in the mid-1930s, after which she joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and became an active supporter of the party's newspaper The Daily Worker. In the same year, the Norwoods bought their semi-detached house in Bexleyheath, where they led an apparently unremarkable life together. Melita Norwood would continue to live there until she was 90. but Melita Norwood was not then detained. Meanwhile, a wave of purges in Moscow led the NKVD to cut back on its overseas espionage activities. Responsibility for Norwood was turned over to the GRU, the Soviet Union's military overseas intelligence service. Her Soviet handlers gave her a succession of different code names, the last being "Agent Hola". Her position as secretary to G. L. Bailey, head of a department at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association, enabled Norwood to pass her Soviet handlers material relating to the British atomic weapons project, known at the time by the innocuous name of Tube Alloys. In 1958, she was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. The British security services eventually identified Norwood as a security risk in 1965, but refrained from questioning her to avoid disclosing their methods. She retired in 1972. Some have questioned the validity of evidence from the Mitrokhin archive. Many scholars remain sceptical of the context and authenticity of the notes of Mitrokhin. In any event, Norwood was never charged with an offence. Motive Norwood said she gained no material benefits from her spying activities. In a statement at the time of her exposure, she said: Red Joan Red Joan is a 2018 film very loosely inspired by Norwood's life, starring Judi Dench and Sophie Cookson. It was directed by Trevor Nunn, and produced by David Parfitt, with a screenplay by Lindsay Shapero. The film, based on the novel of the same name by Jennie Rooney, was shot in the UK, despite some scenes being set in Canada. ==Death==