Greville Maynard Wynne was a British engineer and businessman who was recruited by MI6 because of his frequent travel to Eastern Europe. He became known for acting as a courier to transport top-secret information to London from Soviet agent Oleg Penkovsky. They were both arrested by the KGB in October 1962 and convicted of espionage. Penkovsky was executed the following year and Wynne sentenced to eight years at Lubyanka prison. Struggling with deteriorating health, he was released in 1964 after the British arranged an exchange of Soviet spyKonon Molody.
Life
Wynne was an electrical engineer, trained at the University of Nottingham. Later he went into business, travelling frequently through Eastern Europe. In November 1960, Wynne was recruited by MI6 and asked to make a sales trip to Moscow, where he made contact with Oleg Penkovsky, a high-ranking GRU officer. Penkovsky had made earlier offers to spy for the West. Wynne later became an intermediary and courier for Penkovsky, smuggling top-secret Soviet intelligence to London following his frequent trips to the USSR. Wynne and Penkovsky’s espionage activities were eventually discovered by the KGB. Both men were arrested in October 1962, around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Penkovsky was sentenced to death and executed the following year. Wynne was convicted of spying on 11 May 1963 and sentenced to eight years in prison. He was held in harsh conditions at Lubyanka. In April 1964, amid British concerns for his deteriorating health, Wynne was released in exchange for the Soviet spy Konon Molody. Following his release, Wynne returned to his business career. In 1967, Wynne appeared as himself on the 23 May episode of To Tell the Truth, receiving two of four possible votes. Wynne struggled with depression and alcoholism in the aftermath of imprisonment. Wynne died of throat cancer at Cromwell Hospital in London on 28 February 1990, aged 70.
Questions over prior work
Later in life, Wynne wrote two books about his work for British intelligence: The Man From Moscow and The Man From Odessa. In these books, Wynne claimed to have been recruited by MI5 as early as World War II, long before his work with Penkovsky. However, historians question this account. The authors of The Spy Who Saved the World wrote, “He had no previous intelligence experience or training.” Others have made similar assessments, stating that Wynne was a civilian at the time of his recruitment by MI6 in 1960.
