I spied, admits George Blake

One of the most notorious spies of the Cold War has admitted for the first time that he was a traitor.

George Blake, who fled to the Soviet Union in 1966 after breaking out of Wormwood Scrubs, said he has given up hope of being allowed to come home.

Blake, 80, said from Moscow where he receives a KGB pension: "The idea of rehabilitation is quite excluded for me. I do not

expect it in my lifetime. It is not something I would hope for. One cannot deny that my activities involved treason that many people don't approve of - to put it mildly.

"But the end of the Cold War means that a lot of people won't take such an extreme view any more."

The double agent, whose betrayal is believed to have cost the lives of dozens of British agents, said he was encouraged by the new BBC series Cambridge Spies, in which Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean and John Cairncross are depicted in a sympathetic light.

Blake says his biggest regret was that he failed to tell his first wife, who worked as a secretary, of his actions. "That is where I feel my greatest guilt," he said.