Richard Gott - Since 1980

Since 1980

In 1981 the BBC sought to appoint Gott to the position of editor at its cultural magazine The Listener, but his radical politics led to him failing to obtain security clearance and Russell Twisk was appointed instead.

Gott resigned as literary editor of the Guardian in 1994 after it was alleged in The Spectator that he had been an "agent of influence" for the KGB, claims which he rejected, arguing that "Like many other journalists, diplomats and politicians, I lunched with Russians during the cold war". He asserted that his resignation was "a debt of honour to my paper, not an admission of guilt", because his failure to inform his editor of three trips abroad to meet with KGB officials at their expense had caused embarrassment to the paper during its investigation of Jonathan Aitken.

The source of the allegation that he was an agent, KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky. In his resignation letter Gott admitted "I took red gold, even if it was only in the form of expenses for myself and my partner. That, in the circumstances, was culpable stupidity, though at the time it seemed more like an enjoyable joke". One issue was whether during the 1980s, the KGB, would have thought Gott's information worth £10,000. Kim Philby's biographer Phillip Knightley highlighted the limited value of outsider Gott as compared to insider, Aldrich Ames concluding that Gott would have been lucky to get his bus fare back. Rupert Allason pointed out valuable activities such as talent-spotting and finding people that did have highly classified access.

Richard Gott is currently an honorary research fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London.