WITH relations between the UK and Russia at their frostiest since the frigid depths of the Cold War, perhaps it's time to look back at the story of a naval officer from Malvern who was once expelled from Moscow during a massive spy row.

Lieutenant-Commander Nigel Laville was one of the prime protagonists in a major diplomatic incident that exploded in 1964, when he was serving as a naval attache at the British Embassy in Moscow in 1964.

Talking to the Worcester News many years later in 1981, Lt-Cdr Laville recalled: "We were allowed to engage in a sort of tolerated spying. We could go and look round Leningrad and other naval bases, but these were heavily screened for our visits, though the experienced eye could pick up valuable information.

"However, it was all done on a tit-for-tat basis. The Russian naval attaches in this country were permitted to make similar visits to places like Portsmouth or Rosyth. If, however, we were refused permission to visit a shipyard such as Riga, then this country would deny their people a look at Rosyth."

Lt-Cdr Laville said that the Moscow scene in the 1960s smacked of "childish James Bond stuff".

"They played it rougher than we did though it was highly childish. Whenever we drove around, there would always be a car full of goons in front of us and another at the back.

"It was a great game to try and shake them off, we spent a lot of time trying to twist their tails."

Lt-Cdr Laville's marching orders from the Soviet Union came after an eventful journey on the Trans Siberian Railway, accompanying three top American officers. At the time, two Russian diplomats at the UN in New York has been arrested, and reprisals were expected.

"At 1am, the door of the bedroom I was sharing with one of the Americans burst open and 15 burly KGB men rushed in and held us down.

"They seemed particularly interested in my watch as if it held some sort of hidden gadgetry, but they found nothing at all on us. We were released the following morning to find that the Russians had laid on a special line so that the Americans could duly report the 'outrage' to their embassy."

He said the KGB had not expected to find a Brit with the Americans they had targeted, and "all hell let loose", with diplomatic notes flying about.

When he returned to Moscow, he and the others on the train were forced to stay 30km from the city centre, effectively preventing them from doing their jobs.

"After three months, the British and American authorities said that either the restriction on us was lifted, or some of their diplomatic staff would be asked to leave America and London. Within 24 hours, we were declared persona non grata, which meant leaving two days before Christmas, and with only nine months of my two-year tour of duty in Moscow complete."

Lt-Cdr Laville went on to become a member of the then-Hereford and Worcester County Council, serving as the authority's sometimes controversial education chairman.