Brian Melville chaired our meeting this week as our President Jim Cox was away as were a number of other regular stalwarts.

Our speaker this week was Robert Skelt of Cheltenham and the subject of his talk was spying, which he described as the second oldest profession. That surprised some of us who had thought it was accountancy.

Robert listed the various organisations that engaged in spying, including MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the police, as well as industry and commerce, journalists, detective and recruitment agencies, and explained why they did it. He described the background and activities of some of the well known spies of yester-year, like MacClean, Burgess, Blunt and Blake. He also mentioned others, less well known, but traitors nevertheless. The number of lives lost as a result of their misguided actions, and the national damage they caused, was monumental. He concluded his presentation with the suggestion that cyber spying would become the biggest risk for the future.

We had lots of questions for Robert which he answered fully. He advised that if ever we saw someone driving round a roundabout three times, we could be certain they were a spy, which prompted one or two of us to suspect our own wives! Peter Penny thanked Robert profusely.

Next week, on May 15, we have a talk by Stewart Wardrop on Racing Pigeons, followed on May 15 by a member’s morning organised by Grenville Burrows.

We meet every Thursday at 10am at the Ecgwins Club in Evesham. Do join us.

Chris Donough