’The Grandmother of Us All’ Edith Tudor-Hart and the Cambridge spies

Stewart Purvis CBE explores Edith Tudor-Hart's connections to the Cambridge Five spies and Soviet intelligence operatives in Hampstead.

Stewart Purvis CBE is the co-author of When Reporters Cross the Line and Guy Burgess, the Spy Who Knew Everyone. His research into MI5’s files on Burgess led him to create a guided walk ‘the Hampstead Spies’ about the KGB’s activities in London NW3 in the 1930s.

Stewart is a former Editor-in-Chief and Chief Executive of ITN, the TV news provider he joined in 1972 after being appointed one of the BBC’s first three news trainees in 1969. At ITN Stewart won Royal Television Society awards for news and documentaries and two BAFTA awards as Editor of Channel Four News.

After retiring from ITN in 2003 Stewart became a Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media at Oxford University and the first Professor of Television Journalism at City University London.

From 2007 to 2010 he was Ofcom’s Partner for Content and Standards.