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The Courier (2020 Film)
''The Courier'' is a 2020 historical spy film directed by Dominic Cooke and written by Tom O'Connor. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Greville Wynne, and is based on the true story of a British businessman who was recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service to be a message conduit with Russian spy source Oleg Penkovsky (played by Merab Ninidze) in the 1960s. Rachel Brosnahan, Jessie Buckley, and Angus Wright also star. ''The Courier'' had its world premiere under its original title ''Ironbark'' at the Sundance Film Festival on 24 January 2020, and was theatrically released in the United States on 19 March 2021, and the United Kingdom on 13 August 2021. The film received generally favourable reviews from critics. Plot In 1960, Oleg Penkovsky, a high ranking Soviet official and GRU intelligence officer with access to top secret nuclear information, is disillusioned with Khrushchev's leadership in light of the growing threat of a nuclear war with the United States. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dominic Cooke
Dominic Cooke (born 1966) is an English director and writer. Early life Born in Wimbledon, south London, Cooke was brought up seeing a lot of theatre as a teenager from free theatre tickets provided by the Inner London Education Authority. Career Soon after graduating from Warwick University, Cooke's first job as a TV runner led him to start his own theatre company, Pan Optic, which he ran for two years before becoming an assistant director at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). He started his relationship with the Royal Court Theatre under Stephen Daldry in 1995. He then became an associate director at the Royal Court for Ian Rickson in 1999 during which time he directed '' Fireface'' by Marius von Mayenburg, ''Other People'' by Christopher Shinn and ''Redundant'' by Leo Butler. In 2003 he left the Royal Court and returned to the RSC for Michael Boyd where he directed his acclaimed version of ''The Crucible'' starring Iain Glen which won him the 2007 Laurence Olivier ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greville Wynne
Greville Maynard Wynne (19 March 1919 – 28 February 1990) was a British engineer and businessman recruited by MI6 because of his frequent travel to Eastern Europe. He acted as a courier to transport top-secret information to London from Soviet agent Oleg Penkovsky. Wynne and Penkovsky were both arrested by the KGB in November 1962, when some of the information their endeavours produced was of assistance to the West during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They were convicted of espionage. Penkovsky was executed the following year and Wynne was sentenced to eight years imprisonment. He was detained at Lubyanka prison. Struggling with deteriorating health, he was released in 1964 in exchange for the Soviet spy Konon Molody. Early life Wynne was born in Shropshire, England, and raised in Ystrad Mynach, South Wales. His father was a foreman in an engineering workshop. He struggled with dyslexia and left school at 14 to work for an electrical contractor. He then worked at a telephon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kirill Pirogov
Kirill Alfredovich Pirogov (russian: Кирилл Альфредович Пирогов; born 4 September 1973) is a Russian film and theatre actor and composer. He has appeared in more than twenty films since 1995. In 2005 he was made an Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation. Biography Pirogov was born in Tehran, Iran, to a Russian family. His father worked in the field of foreign trade, engaged in the export and import of heavy road and construction equipment. Pirogov studied in a theatre studio under the leadership of Sergei Kazarnovsky and also graduated from music school. His parents saw a future for him in a more serious profession, wanting their son to study at university. However, the decision was already made, and in 1994 Pirogov graduated from the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute The Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute (russian: Театральный институт имени Бориса Щукина) is a Russian drama college in Moscow, formed in 1914 as part o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John A
Sir John Alexander Macdonald (January 10 or 11, 1815 – June 6, 1891) was the first prime minister of Canada, serving from 1867 to 1873 and from 1878 to 1891. The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, he had a political career that spanned almost half a century. Macdonald was born in Scotland; when he was a boy his family immigrated to Kingston in the Province of Upper Canada (today in eastern Ontario). As a lawyer, he was involved in several high-profile cases and quickly became prominent in Kingston, which elected him in 1844 to the legislature of the Province of Canada. By 1857, he had become premier under the colony's unstable political system. In 1864, when no party proved capable of governing for long, Macdonald agreed to a proposal from his political rival, George Brown, that the parties unite in a Great Coalition to seek federation and political reform. Macdonald was the leading figure in the subsequent discussions and conferences, which resulted in the Brit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Željko Ivanek
Željko Ivanek (né Šimić-Ivanek; ; ; born August 15, 1957) is an American actor, known for his role as Ray Fiske on ''Damages'', for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award. Ivanek is also known for his role of Ed Danvers on '' Homicide: Life on the Street'' and '' Homicide: The Movie'', Governor James Devlin on '' Oz'', Andre Drazen on '' 24'', Blake Sterling on the short-lived series ''The Event'', and Emile "The Hunter" Danko in ''Heroes''. From 2014 until 2019, he starred as Russell Jackson in the drama '' Madam Secretary''. He also had a recurring role as FBI Special Agent Jim Racine in the series ''Banshee''. For his active stage career, he has been awarded a Drama Desk Award and has been nominated for three Tony Awards. Early life and education Ivanek was born Željko Šimić-Ivanek in Ljubljana, PR Slovenia, FPR Yugoslavia. In 1960, Željko, his mother and younger brother, Ivan, immigrated to Palo Alto, California, where his father was studying for his PhD in electrical e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dick Franks
Sir Arthur Temple "Dick" Franks (13 July 1920 – 12 October 2008) was Head of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1979 to 1982. Career Educated at Rugby School and Queen's College, Oxford, Franks was commissioned into the Royal Corps of Signals in 1940. He became an Intelligence officer in the Western Desert and then joined the Special Operations Executive. He started his career by "earning a reputation for daring military exploits against Nazi Germany before pursuing a fruitful career on Her Majesty’s secret service." After the War he briefly worked for the ''Daily Mirror'' before joining the Secret Intelligence Service in 1946. He became involved in Operation Boot, a plan to overthrow Mohammad Mosaddegh, the nationalistic Iranian Prime Minister in 1953. He was posted to Bonn in 1962 and was promoted to Deputy Chief in 1977. He was appointed Chief of the Service in 1978, in place of Brian Stewart, the Director of Support Services. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moscow–Washington Hotline
The Moscow–Washington hotline (formally known in the United States as the Washington–Moscow Direct Communications Link; rus, Горячая линия Вашингтон — Москва, r=Goryachaya liniya Vashington–Moskva) is a system that allows direct communication between the leaders of the United States and the Russian Federation (formerly the Soviet Union). This hotline was established in 1963 and links the Pentagon with the Kremlin (historically, with Soviet Communist Party leadership across the square from the Kremlin itself). Although in popular culture it is known as the "red telephone", the hotline was never a telephone line, and no red phones were used. The first implementation used Teletype equipment, and shifted to fax machines in 1986. Since 2008, the Moscow–Washington hotline has been a secure computer link over which messages are exchanged by a secure form of email. Origins Background Several people came up with the idea for a hotline. They included Har ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Konon Molody
Konon Trofimovich Molody (russian: Ко́нон Трофи́мович Моло́дый; 17 January 1922 – 9 September 1970) was a Soviet intelligence officer, known in the West as Gordon Arnold Lonsdale. Posing as a Canadian businessman during the Cold War he was a non-official (illegal) KGB intelligence agent and the mastermind of the Portland Spy Ring, which operated in Britain from the late 1950s until 1961. Gordon Lonsdale identity A person by the name of Gordon Arnold Lonsdale was born on 27 August 1924 in Cobalt, Ontario, Canada. His father Emmanuel Jack Lonsdale was a miner. His mother Olga Elina Bousa had emigrated from Finland. The Lonsdales separated in 1931. A year later, Olga took her 8-year-old son with her back to her native Finland. He is believed to have died c. 1943 and the Soviets obtained his papers for use by their agents.Tietjen, Arthur (1961) ''Soviet Spy Ring''. Pan Books. The actual Gordon Lonsdale was recorded as having been circumcised; the impostor w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, which escalated into an international crisis when American deployments of missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of similar ballistic missiles in Cuba. Despite the short time frame, the Cuban Missile Crisis remains a defining moment in national security and nuclear war preparation. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. In response to the presence of American Jupiter ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey, the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961, and Soviet fears of a Cuban drift towards China, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev agreed to Cuba's request to place nuclear missiles on the island to deter a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and performing covert actions. As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. President Harry S. Truman had created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a Director of Central Intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946, and this group was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency by implementation of the National Security Act of 1947. Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of his predecessor Joseph Stalin's crimes, and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan. He sponsored the early Soviet space program, and enactment of moderate reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba, he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin leadership stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil Wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GRU (Soviet Union)
Main Intelligence Directorate ( rus, Главное разведывательное управление, Glavnoye razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye, ˈglavnəjə rɐzˈvʲɛdɨvətʲɪlʲnəjə ʊprɐˈvlʲenʲɪjə), abbreviated GRU ( rus, ГРУ, p=geeˈru), was the foreign military intelligence agency of the Soviet Army General Staff of the Soviet Union until 1991. For a few months it was also the foreign military intelligence agency of the newly established Russian Federation until 7 May 1992 when it was dissolved and the Russian GRU took over its activities. History The GRU's first predecessor in Russia formed on October 21, 1918 by secret order under the sponsorship of Leon Trotsky (then the civilian leader of the Red Army), signed by Jukums Vācietis, the first commander-in-chief of the Red Army (RKKA), and by Ephraim Sklyansky, deputy to Trotsky; it was originally known as the Registration Directorate (''Registrupravlenie'', or RU). Semyon Aralov was its first head. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
