John Vassall - Later Years

Later Years

Vassall served ten years of his sentence, in Wormwood Scrubs, Maidstone and Durham prisons. Many considered him to have been a relatively innocent victim of circumstances, and he was befriended in prison by the social reformer, Lord Longford. He was eventually released on parole in October 1972. He then wrote an autobiography, published in 1975, which he described as "a kind of self-justification, not as regards my espionage activities, but as regards my position as a human being, and, perhaps, my ability to make and keep friends in all walks of life". Rex Winsbury called the book " cross between Jennifer's Diary and James Bond, ... bewildering both for Vassall's own transparent naivety and social snobbism, ... and for the equally transparent naivety of the British Foreign Office and security forces". Hungarian émigré George Mikes similarly concluded that it was Vassall's "vanity, his childish snobbery, his devouring ambition and complete lack of humour that pushed him so deep into the quagmire".

Vassall subsequently changed his surname to Phillips, and worked quietly as an administrator at the British Records Association, and for a firm of solicitors in Gray's Inn. He died after suffering a heart-attack on a London bus in November 1996: it was not until nearly three weeks later that the press became aware of his death.

In 1980 the BBC broadcast a docudrama about the affair, in which Vassall was played by John Normington as "weak, vain and keen to be thought a gentleman". The play caused some controversy when it became known that neither Lady Hayter, the Ambassador's wife when Vassall arrived in Moscow, nor Captain Geoffrey Bennett, the naval attaché, had been consulted or advised that they were to be portrayed: they only learnt when Radio Times was published four days before the broadcast.